Pros And Cons Of Drinking Age At 21

Estimates from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration claim every year nine hundred lives are saved by the drinking age being set at twenty-one. In 1984 the federal government passed a law that the minimum drinking age should be twenty-one in all states, and since then drunk driving rates have dropped fifty-four percent. While lives have been saved by the minimum age being raised the law is outdated because there are better safety features in vehicles and punishments for drunk driving than there were in the 1980s.
Bahar Gholipour, a writer for The Huffington Post, warns in his article, “Keeping Legal Drinking Age at 21 Saves 900 Lives Yearly: Study,” that the drinking age should remain at twenty- one because there is evidence that the higher drinking age has lowered underage drinking and drunk driving. In 2011, researchers compared college students of today with college students of 1988 and found those who binge drank in the past two weeks had decreased by seven percent. Gholipour mentions that researchers have found the minimum drinking age being twenty-one has had positive effects, and instead of lowering the drinking age there should be stricter enforcement of the law. “Clinical trials have …show more content…
Gholipour does not discuss why the law was passed and the consequences that followed; Mothers Against Drunk Driving pushed for the minimum age to be raised in the 1980s, and in 1984 the law was passed. This took away the safe, controlled places for younger people to drink. College fraternity parties became the normal place to go, and dangerous situations and drugs arose for those who chose to drink. The statistics Gholipour uses in his article are true, but Camille Paglia says the drinking age caused more harm than