The Drinking Age

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There are one hundred and ninety six sovereign countries in the world today. Of these provinces fifty nine percent have the minimum legal drinking age set at eighteen or nineteen years old. The United States of America is within the six percent of the world that has the age set at twenty-one. The primary reason for the increase of modulation in the U.S. and general belief in society is that having a higher minimum legal drinking age decreases alcohol related automobile accidents. However, there is little evidence supporting this claim. Even if there were an overriding amount of evidence to back the belief, any death prevented on highways would be made up for in deaths behind closed doors and in unsupervised settings. For this reason, among …show more content…
Perfectionist ideals such as this led to the first official state prohibition law in the year eighteen forty-six. Seventy-three years later, Congress ratified the eighteenth amendment. The reform banned all manufacturing, transportation, and sale of any and all intoxicating liquor nationwide. The ban essentially proved to be a complete failure due to an immense amount of bootlegging and speakeasies. Setting the minimum legal drinking limit at twenty-one has created new age of speakeasies so to speak. Those under the limit can find a source for obtaining alcohol fairly easy and will take to drinking in basements, in the woods, and anywhere else lacking any form of responsible …show more content…
Binge drinking can lead to alcohol poisoning and a number of unintentional injuries. Drinking in general while the brain is still developing is hazardous to the healthy growth and development of the human brain, but when alcohol is consumed on a scale of the average binge session of an underage drinker the risk is raised astronomically. These binges are usually a result of a preventive measure for getting caught called pregaming. The idea behind this strategy is to down as many drinks before going out into public. If the minimum legal drinking limit were set at eighteen then there would be no reason for games like this to

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