Drinking Age To 18 Research Paper

Superior Essays
Eighteen is considered adulthood, yet, at this age one is still not treated as such. When one turns eighteen, they become a legal adult, and receive their rights, except the right to consume alcohol legally. The drinking age in the United States is currently set at twenty-one. But, some people believe that twenty-one is too high for the minimum age and, think it should be lower. There are others who feel that twenty-one is a decent, mature age, and lowering it would encourage young to take part in alcohol consumption. At eighteen one can vote, join the service, get married, buy tobacco, work in a bar, and do many other things. The drinking age should be lowered back to eighteen because: if eighteen year olds are capable of voting and fighting for their country, they should be able to have a drink, also, lowering the age would help with less college students …show more content…
When one is voting, they are trusted to make a mature decision. Eighteen is mature enough to decide who should run the country, but not mature enough to buy and consume alcohol legally. One is trusted to vote, but one is not trusted to have a drink. Chris Busby once stated in his monthly magazine, “If 18-year-olds are considered mature enough to fight in wars, they’re mature enough to drink in bars. To this I would add that if 18-year-olds can vote for the politicians who start wars, they’re old enough to choose the wrong brand of beer, too.” Yes, alcohol may not be healthy, but it is still one’s decision to consume it. At eighteen, one is considered an adult, but, can not do all the things adults are able to do. It is thought that lowering the drinking age would cause more drunk driving accidents, but, there could be other laws that could be enforced to help with this. In Dr. Ruth Engs research she stated: “The decrease in drinking and driving problems are the result of many factors and not just the rise in purchase age or decreased per capita

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Drinking age shouldn’t be lowered. 18 should not be the age that young adults can legally start drinking because the brain is still flourishing. As it states in the article “A lower Age Would Be Unsafe: The 21 Drinking Age Has Saved Lives and Should Remain” by Laura Dean-Mooney, Dean-Mooney claims that the evolution of a human being “brian does not stop developing until their early mid-20s.” To put it differently, a young adult at the age 18 brians’ is not thoroughly developed, which can have an outstanding negative impact on their brain in which they won’t be able make the right decisions or…

    • 105 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    For my persuasive essay I would discuss my reasoning on why I believe the drinking age should be raised to 25. There are too many incidents involving alcohol and young adults. If the drinking age was 25 it would decrease the chances of engaging in unprotected sex, driving while intoxicated, and overall it would minimize the amount of bad choices made among young adults. The brain isn’t fully mature until the age of 25 which means that the decision making part of our brain isn’t fully developed before then. In order to prevent drunk young adults from making bad choices they should refrain from drinking until their brain is fully matured.…

    • 330 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Alan Greenblallats

    • 465 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Setting the drinking age to 18 will make 18 year olds feel more comfortable and responsible drinking without having the thought that they are doing something wrong. McCardell, a former president of Middlebury College, says the problem is, “... That underage kids don’t actually consider themselves underage”. (Greenblatt, 13) 18 is the age where people start taking things more responsibly and having to go behind the law to drink, when they can make authoritive decisions, does not help them to be more comfortable. One may defend that 18 is not a good age to start drinking because they will not be responsible with it. “The people who are advocating going down to 18 should ackowledge that they’re willing to risk an extra thousands death per year and double that number of injuries”.…

    • 465 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The responsibilities one has when you are drinking are huge. People are not only just affecting themselves when drinking, but also they are affecting other people also (“Minimum”). Teenagers need to be educated on these side effects. Therefore the drinking age should be changed to eighteen in order to help educate teenagers the side effects of drinking, warning more effectively will help those who drink and drive, and also keeping with the most…

    • 2159 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    English In the United States of America at the age of eighteen you are officially an adult and are able to do everything that you are ever legally going to be able to do, except for one, buy or consume alcohol. If an eighteen year old is able to lay their life down for their country then why shouldn’t they be able to drink a beer? The minimum legal drinking age or (MLDA) of twenty one encourages dangerous drinking habits. Over seventy percent of eighteen year olds admit to consuming alcohol in the past month alone.…

    • 1428 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Lowering the drinking age to 18 would cause even more drunk driving. People age 16 to 20 are 17 times more likely to die in a vehicle crash when they have a blood alcohol concentration of .08 percent than when they have not been drinking alcohol. Keeping 21 the minimum legal drinking age has prevented teen drinking and…

    • 1284 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A different reason supporting the legal drinking age to be 21 is that accidents due to drinking and driving would occur more often than they already do. More health concerns would also arise such as brain negativity. The other side, however, argues that the legal drinking age should be lowered to 18. When a teen turns 18 they are considered an adult. 18 year olds can serve in the military and in juries, buy cigarettes, and are able to start working in order to support themselves.…

    • 1978 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Lowering the age of drinking would save lives and reduce the amount of accidents due to driving while under the influence. In the United States, you can be a 20 year old married woman with two children, in a home that has a mortgage on it, and serve in the military, but you can’t drink a beer. People should be permitted to drink at the age of 18 because it will become a moderation for them overtime.…

    • 1221 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It has been an ongoing controversy in the United States whether the drinking age should be lowered to eighteen or if it should remain at twenty-one. Underage drinking has been and will continue to be a major controversial issue for many years. The attached article states, the legal drinking age of twenty-one has been in effect in the United States since 1984, however any state is free to lower it, but a ten percent penalty would be applied in its federal funding for transportation. There are advocates that argues the drinking age should be lowered because at eighteen the individual is old enough to vote, and go to war then, such individual should be allowed to purchase and consume alcoholic beverages. However, the drinking age should not be lowered because risks such as drunk driving, violent or destructive behavior, and medical complications.…

    • 574 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Why not eighteen? Eighteen is an important age; it is when one becomes an adult. It is now legal to vote, buy cigarettes, go to clubs, and do everything else that any adult can do. Hold on, that is not true, purchasing of alcohol is still illegal. Up until 1984, eighteen year olds were able to drink and purchase alcohol legally.…

    • 2226 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The drinking age in the United States is twenty one, and is a topic of debate today. In 1984 Ronald Reagan signed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act which made the national drinking age twenty one across the nation. Before Reagan signed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, the drinking age varied throughout the states between eighteen and twenty one. This caused many states to change the age and become what it is now. Reagan signed the act for drinking age requirements to be twenty one,this not only reduced the sales of alcohol but also made illegally getting alcohol a more popular act.…

    • 540 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    I believe that the drinking age should be lowered to 18, and here are my reasons: I believe that if you are able to die for country at the age of eighteen that you should be able to drink at the age of eighteen. There would be a lot more drunk drivers, but that is why responsibility needs to be taught, so that there could be less drunk drivers in the future. My last reason is that at the age of eighteen we are basically adults. My first reason is that if you can die for your country at the age of eighteen, then you should be able to drink at the age of eighteen. If you can die for your country at the age of eighteen, and you aren’t able to drink then I think that if the drinking age is twenty-one then the drafting age should be increased to…

    • 349 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The legal drinking age is currently set at twenty-one. In history alcohol has been very present, yet even then they warned of the dangers. When the legal drinking age was set at twenty-one in 1984 it dropped many teen accidents. Mentally teens brains are not fully developed until age twenty-five, and alcohol can pause the brains growth. When teens drink as well they have a tendency to binge drink which then leads to alcohol dependency later on in life.…

    • 1813 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In other words, if voting and military sign up is eighteen, then drinking should also be eighteen. Besides at the age of eighteen you are legally an…

    • 1092 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Accidents while driving under the influence of alcohol have been lowering each year since 1982 which was two years before the act was passed that made the legal drinking age 21. The rate of drunk driving is highest among people over the age of 21 which result in 90 percent of drunken accidents. This statistic alone shows that driving under the influence of alcohol and getting into an accident cannot be pinned on what the drinking age is. In some European countries the legal drinking age is either eighteen or as low as 16 and in these countries the amount of deaths while driving under the influence of alcohol have decreased faster than the rate of those in the United States where you must be 21 to drink legally. It seems as if lowering the drinking age may just keep more people alive rather than increase deaths.…

    • 812 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays