From the moment the United States entered the great fight of World War I; it was found that during that same year congress presented the eighteenth amendment which banned the transportation, manufacturing, and above all, the sale of intoxicating-liquors. The amendment received a greater amount of support of the necessary three-fourths of the country in just only eleven months.
Although there was such many support for the prohibition act, it seemed that a great majority of United States citizens were unhappy. According to history.com, the prohibition of alcohol induced a wide range of criminal activity often known as bootlegging. You see, for years the act of binge drinking alcohol has been a problem that the American people faced and continue to face. Binge drinking is one of the top problems that comes with unfortunate under-the-influence driving tragedies, suicidal tendencies, and alcohol poisoning related deaths.
Over the years to date, man has come to terms with the fact that tightening the rules and implicating laws that hold citizens on a tight leash, end up becoming the reasoning for obtaining the desire to go out and break the laws that are supposed to be better for us all in which doesn’t ever seem to be a just solution – just as the 1920s prohibition act in the taught the American people.
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According to statistics about eighty percent of all the world’s countries’ legal drinking age is below the age of 18 years old. While this is true, this makes it so that the United States is a widely spread outlier compared to all the places in the world. Because of this fact, is there is often many debates on whether the drinking age should be lowered in the United States. Often people might hear that at such a young age, being 18, our brains are underdeveloped – not enough for alcohol to be safely consumed making it more dangerous for “children” to drink versus those who are above the age of twenty-one.
However, while this idea can be supported, on the opposition, we see how these other countries thrive even with the lower drinking age where it is far below the age of twenty-one. According to Centers of Disease Control, more than half of high school student have “tried” alcohol. This strongly implies that while not only it is shown that obtaining alcohol is simple for young adults, but it proves that despite the law these young adults are going to drink anyways.
At the age of eighteen, this young “adult” gains the privilege to fight for our country, yet they dismiss the idea for him, or her to sit down and enjoy a beer. For what we understand an age to be considered the age of adult, there are things young adults can do, but can’t do, that make little-to-no sense. With this said, it becomes clear that the drinking age in the United States should be lowered for the reason that you can risk your life, vote for our country’s leaders, but not have the ability to consume an alcoholic beverage safely and legally.
According to a survey presented by Monitoring the Future, a website that provides statistical information on American youth, the group of students that participated in the survey indicated that at least sixty-eight percent of the student have tried alcohol in the last thirty days, and almost forty percent have drank. Even though the law states that no one under the age of twenty-one shall not consume alcohol – it’s still very common that this law will not eliminate underage drinking.
Statistics show that in the United States underage drinking is a problem in high school, as well as college. In fact today drinking is more common for younger teenagers with all the media put out into the internet that influences young people. According to the Center of Disease control, even though “drinking by persons under the age of 21 is illegal, people aged 12 to 20 years old drink 11% of all alcohol consumed in all of the United States” (CDC). The debate of lowering or raising the legal drinking age has been ongoing since the drinking age was lowered in the past. The idea here, is that no matter the circumstance, it’s evident that underage consumption of alcohol is going to happen even with where the minimum age it is at right now.
Relative to drinking, some of the biggest controversies are in relation to the overall risks that come when actions are uncertain during the consumption of alcohol. When the United States raised the age to twenty-one it did not make the alcohol related-death count decline. According to statistics Global Status report on road safety, the United States ranks to be one of the top three worst countries for drunk driving. Out of all the countries in the world the United States is ranked third which can only mean one that the in the United States a whopping thirty-one percent of all road deaths have been linked to alcohol consumption.
From what we now know, over three fourths of the world’s countries legal drinking age is below the United States minimum age of twenty-one which might lead to the conclusion that a lower drinking age creates a much more controlled way of drinking for citizens in the country they live in. For example, once before statistics used to inform us of the actual amount of 18-20 year old who were part of alcohol-related incidents. The unfortunate part of this is that these incidents also included those who were in the car with either their parents or other adults whom may have been drinking on-site or driving under the influence of alcohol substances.
Often, certain media sources used these “statistics” in their new sources to create misleading eventual facts. Thus, this possibly led many people to join alongside the non profit organization, MADD, in their own efforts to raise the drinking age. The way this was done was more-so likely by writing multiple letters to congress that would in turn create an outstanding obligation for congress to change the laws. Eventually that’s when we see that the national drinking age was changed to the age of 21 and continues on to this day.
The effects of lowering the legal drinking age to 18 years old would be a significant step in the attempt to reduce the crime and the delinquency of highschool and college students; and more specifically those under the age of twenty-one.
