Minimum Legal Drinking Age

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Today drinking has become one of the largest social issues among young people in the United States. In 1933, the eighteenth amendment of the United States Constitution effectively established the prohibition of alcohol beverages by declaring the production, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States. In 1984, the law of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act was passed by lawmakers in congress. This law of the minimum drinking age ultimately told the United States that they had to ratify the minimum drinking age to twenty-one years old. If the United States denied the request of the government, the states would lose up to ten percent of their federal highway funding. Alcohol consumption can interfere with the …show more content…
Many activities have ages of initiation, especially drinking alcoholic beverages. The right to drink should have a higher age of initiation because of the dangers posed by the consumption of alcohol. The legal drinking age of twenty-one years old was set for a few specific reasons. Even though the minimum legal drinking age of twenty-one is largely ineffective because the majority of teenagers and young adults continue to consume alcoholic beverages. Studies have shown that by having the minimum legal drinking age set at twenty-one years old a numerous amount of lives have been saved in the past few years. More than 25,000 lives have been saved from this law. This law continues to prevent tragedies such as car crashes and many other risks young people may encounter while drinking alcoholic beverages. The age limit was based on previous research which shows that younger people react differently to alcohol than the way older people do. Young adults, or even teenagers, get drunk twice as fast as older adults do, but have more trouble knowing when they should stop consuming alcohol. If the legal drinking age was lowered to eighteen, I feel that it would make an even bigger problem for the citizens of the United States. Lowering the drinking age to eighteen will invite more use of illicit drugs among eighteen to twenty-one year olds. Today the drinking age is twenty-one and already young adults at the age of sixteen are already drinking illegally. They do this because some of these teenagers and young adults think that they are close enough to the legal drinking age so they start drinking way earlier then they should. Also, these young adults and teenagers think it is more attractive to drink at a younger age and think that they will fit in with others if they break the law. Teenagers will find any way to go out and get drunk on the weekend with their friends by purchasing fake

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