Drinking age, lowering age to 18 - research paper

I am writing a research paper about lowering the drinking age to 18.
I cannot think of where to start and how to outline my research paper. The paper is 5-7 pages.
Thesis: (working on it...)something to do with: it is beneficial to lower the drinking age back to 18 years old.
I. HELP!!

is that ur thesis? it is beneficial to lower the drinking age back to 18 years old? if it is i think its a little bit short.

well.. like I said.. Im working on it. thats just pretty much the idea only half thought out...

Before you use that as your thesis, you have to decide if it is really your opinion. What if you could sign a bill to make that change right now. You can expect that the added freedom you are providing to many 18-20 year-olds will cost some of them their lives.

Or do you think that keeping it illegal does not prevent many of them from driving while drunk? Perhaps more of them would be driving drunk if they were legally allowed to drink. Because they just got their licenses, so they perhaps want to be cool about things and not get an MIP charge. So, I think lowering the age will get a lot of kids killed, and I disagree with you. Raise the age to 30, because that is a good time to start drinking. Drinking takes a lot out of you when you are supposed to be... high-achieving or something. Building a career.

These are some thoughts to get you started. What could possibly be the benefit of letting kids drink when they are supposed to be taking their educations?

Nonsense! Clearly the drinking age should be lowered to 18. If a person is old enough to vote, and has the mental capacity to decide who should make the country's laws; if he is old enough to be drafted into the army to be trained to kill and to die in his country's service; if he is old enough to be held mentally competent to stand trial and possibly face the death penalty, then he must surely be old enough to decide whether or not he wants to consume a bottle of beer. Plus, it's American beer, which means it only slightly more alcoholic than water anyway. :-)

You could also point out that making something illegal only makes it more desirable, and that binge drinking of the sort that leads to most young adults' irresponsible behavior, is far more common in the States than in countries that allow them to drink at an early age. [Hey, that gives you something to research. Imagine writing a research paper that references empirical studies].

You could likewise point out that the reason most adults drink is because they believe the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, and that there is no reason why this should be true at 21 and not at 20.

And if anyone should be foolish enough to object that people shouldn't drink because they should be getting an education, you could naturally respond that learning to balance socializing and work is a part of a good education.

Sorry, Kevin -- just wanted to provide the opposing side, here. :-)

Well, that is a lot of good raw material for the essay. (The way I see it, though, it's insane to give the kids their cars and their freedom to drink right around the same time. And about the argument about making it more desirable by having it illegal... I don't know, I guess we can't stop the risk-taking, but we don't have to condone it! Also, I don't think there is a causal relationship between the legal drinking age and the prevalence of recklessness among kids in America. I also notice that your briefest point, above, was the one about benefits outwweiging the harm. There are no benefits to drinking! Even the commonly cited benefits are cop-outs... like, needing a "social lubricant.")

Presumably, most people who drink would disagree with you. As two-thirds of Americans drink (which is actually a fairly low percentage, compared to many other nations), your opinion is therefore a minority view. If one assumes that the law should reflect majority opinion in a democracy, then the law should be altered to lower the drinking age. That is, if the benefits of drinking outweigh the drawbacks, as the majority of Americans clearly believe, then there is no good reason to believe that this isn't just as true at 18 as it is at 21, given that 18 is the age of majority in every other respect (voting, conscription, adult under the law, etc.). That was actually the point that I was trying to make. I didn't actually wish to argue, at that juncture, that the benefits of drinking actually do outweigh the costs.

Though, now that you mention it, why do you say there are no benefits to drinking? You obviously don't mean that, because if it were true, then no one would ever drink. So, clearly, there are some benefits to drinking. Perhaps you mean that, in the long run, the costs always outweigh the benefits? But if so, on what grounds do you stake your claim? You can argue against binge drinking easily enough, as always being physically detrimental, but a glass or two of wine a day is generally viewed as having no physical ill-effects. And why would you say that the claim that alcohol is a social lubricant is a cop out. It is a depressant that people experience, at least initially, as a stimulant, because the first part of the brain that it shuts down is the part responsible for our inhibitions. Clearly this is a problem if people drink too much (having some inhibition can be a very good thing), but for people who are overly inhibited, i.e. shy, reserved, overly introspective, etc., then I cannot see, off hand, any reason why moderate consumption of alcohol shouldn't have an effect that could accurately be described as "social lubrication."

Well, in response to the first paragraph, the fact that majority rules doesn't necessarily mean the majority is right.

About the second paragraph, you are right when you say I can't reasonably assert that drinking has no benefits. I was being lazy in my explanation. When I said that, I meant that the harm of drinking outweighs the good. It's not as though it is the only way to change one's state of mind.... oh, no! I just got to the part where you pointed out that, "You can argue against binge drinking easily enough, as always being physically detrimental, but a glass or two of wine a day is generally viewed as having no physical ill-effects."

You win. I guess I was not thinking of moderation.

Wait a minute, maybe you don't win... we are talking about if it is a good idea to let kids drink legally right at the same time as we give them their licenses. I argue that most kids do not drink a glass of wine or two, but instead funnel beers 3 at a time. I also argue that it is impossible for kids to moderate properly just before getting into their car, because they are too young to estimate how it is effecting them. I think it is good to give them the extra 3 or 4 years to get good at driving before they are legally able to drive to and from the bar.


Yep, I really do agree with you. But with regard to the overall question of whether or not it would be good to suddenly let them all into the bar (teens sometimes are not inhibited enough even when sober!), I say let them wait til they are 21.

However, this is not something I feel certain about. Personal freedom is important. If there was no such thing as cars, my opinion would be different!

If random Google web pages are to be believed, roughly 50,000 people a year die in car accidents in America. Around 8000 of those fatalities are caused by drunk driving. Put another way, 42,000 approximately, are caused by sober driving. Now, admittedly, this is not to say that drinking improves one's chances of avoiding an accident -- presumably far more people drive sober than drive drunk, so drunk driving could still increase one's chances of having an accident. However, given the high number of traffic fatalities that occur even without alcohol, I would say that banning cars, or else dramatically increasing the driving age, would be a better solution than increasing the drinking age.

BTW, I wanted to compared traffic deaths world-wide to alcohol-related deaths, but finding reliable statistics on the latter proved difficult. Most of the studies done are carried out by groups that frown on drinking to begin with, so they count any and all deaths in which alcohol was involved, without really looking to see if alcohol played a causal role in the death. So, one study, for instance, included homicides carried out by people who have been drinking, which seems specious -- after all, if I were decide to kill another person in cold blood, I'd probably take a stiff drink or two beforehand to steady my nerves. That is, the decision to commit murder could as easily cause people to drink as the other way around. Likewise, the studies tend to include every death from every disease for which alcohol ups the risk factor, though obviously many of the people who suffered from them would have become ill anyway, because the vast majority of those illnesses have causes other than alcohol.

kayla,
It is quit obvious that this is a good topic to write about by looking at our moderators opinions. I agree that you need to take a position and defend it. Don't just state a bunch of facts that lead us in different directions.

Yes, this is good raw material for an essay! I know what Sean means. Alcohol is not a prerequisite for car accidents. But inattention is a prerequisite, and alcohol is conducive to inattention.

Anyway, the original question is whether or not to lower the drinking age. I don't know; maybe you are right when you say that the illegality contributes to the appeal, but then what is the idea? To use reverse psychology to get kids to drink less?

If I had to bet money, I would say that lowering the legal drinking age would cost lots of lives. There is no way to prove that, of course.

Here is something that might be particularly helpful in figuring out how to write the essay: What would be the greatest benefit of lowering the drinking age? I can't think of any benefit that justifies what seems like it would result in loss of life.

If even one car accident involving a bunch of teens would be prevented by forbidding young drivers from having ANY alcohol on their breath (or risk losing that new privilege), I think that is enough reason for all the kids in the country to abstain for a few years. I don't think anyone would argue that lowering the drinking age would result in FEWER accidents...would they?

Give them the license at 18 and the beer at 21. That way, they have 3 years to come to know driving as something to be done sober. The alternative is to send them driving off to the bar at 18!

Perfect world: I say we eradicate driving and lower the drinking age.

I totally disagree with Kevin. Age has little to do with a persons level of maturity and personal responsibility. I've seen a lot more immature 40 and 50 year olds abusing alcohol than 18 and 21 year olds. This whole issue of age limit is an arbitrary number set by politicians who've decided that a person SHOULD be mature enough to make certain decisions. My point is, like Sean said, if a person can vote, have sex, get married, get a gun licence, run for office, etc, he/she should be allowed to drink. Or, up the age limit for all of those.

Do you really think that when someone hits 21 or as ridiculous as 30 as you mentioned, that he/she is suddenly enlightened with responsible drinking habits? Are you serious? Do you honestly believe that tighter regulations will limit, at all, the availability to those under the age limit?

Take my country for example. I live in India, and the age limit until very recently (I think till 2006) used to 25. Did anyone care? Hell NO! All it succeeded in doing was make the youth feel alienated and create a huge black market for fake drivers licenses. As long as there are booze and cars, there will be drunk driving. Are you really that naive to think setting a magical number will prevent anyone from doing anything? Only in a perfect world.

There's a lot of good material the OP can use. How about research data that list the alcohol related crimes and accidents for each country. Then compare it with age limit for that country and make your own inferences.

Ah! I see. For you the driving age is 18, so making the drinking age 18 too seems foolish. I didn't realize that -- here the driving age is 16, the drinking age 19, so there is already a three-year gap between when people start driving and when they can start legally drinking, which is the same gap you'd get with 18 and 21. I had assumed that 16 was the driving age where you were, too. I guess Canadians are just naturally more mature than Americans. Come to think of it, that explains a lot about our respective cultures :-).

Well, like I said before, this is not something I have a strong opinion about. I can't help feeling that it would be a bad idea to lower the legal drinking age, even though I like to think of myself as someone who values personal freedom, etc.

And I know that the illegality of it does not prevent any kids from doing it (though it might prevent some of them as they have their first driving experiences and want to avoid losing their licenses). But what does that mean? Should we lower the age to 16 then, or 14?

Hey, I did not know that India used to have the age set at 25! The fact that until recently the age was 25 supports my argument, right? It depends on how people feel about alcohol, I guess...

TD mentioned that he does not think people get enlightenments that provide responsible drinking habits, but I disagree. Between the ages of 18 and 25 I had a lot of those! Then again, it was drinking that caused those experiences for me!

As for letting 18 year olds drink and drive home from the bar... well, I might point out that the human brain is not even completely developed until the age of 20!

So, let's get the whole developing-of-the-brain process out of the way first! What the heck do kids need alcohol for, anyway? Alcohol is for later in life, when your metabolism slows down, your muscles hurt, and you are bored with most things, and you know that certain opportunities have been lost forever, and you need some anesthesia to ease that existential ache that makes you stay awake and worry about the years sliding by.

Who are we to tell anyone the age at which they can drink? We are the pedestrians, and we're the other drivers on the road! That gives us the right. Ha ha, to me, it is all about the driving. Really, I'm not sure...

Excellently written! I can see the depression oozing blackly out around your punctuation marks. :-)

you should research in other countries, where drinking age is lower and how they have less accidents than america who has a higher drinking age

Time to pop some popcorn and enjoy the entertainment! I *love* this kind of discussion!

When does a person become an adult? At what age should they be allowed to sign a binding contract, serve in the military, be charged as an adult with a crime, take out a loan, drive a car, be married, vote, consume alcohol, drop out of school? When I look at this list of civil liberties, the consumption of alcohol seems to be the most innocuous!

As long as you aren't combining drinking with driving, the consequences of alcohol use are relatively minor. Driving while sleepy is a major cause of accidents (as is driving while eating, driving while distracted, and driving while being an idiot). The thought that young people, if allowed to consume alcohol, will automatically climb behind the wheel and embark on murderous rampages holds only a small amount of weight in my mind when it comes to setting a drinking age.

Yes, binge drinking is dangerous, but taking anything to extremes is dangerous. Remember the suburban mom who died after participating in the radio promotion to "hold your wee for a Wii." Her death was caused by bottled water.

Many substances that people consume can be mind altering. Sugar highs could cause people to become risk takers. Caffeine, especially in the quantities found in a venti misto with two extra shots of espresso, is a strong stimulant. Should we ban driving on Thanksgiving Day because of the tripafan in turkey? Maybe delis should only be able to sell turkey sandwiches to people over the age of 21.

I am not advocating selling alcohol to minors, but I do find the arbitrary age restrictions on many of our civil liberties to be an interesting topic.

They are not wholly arbitrary. There are objectively good reasons for not allowing a five year-old to operate a motor vehicle. It's just that everyone matures at a different rate, and it is impractical to try to handle matters on a case-by-case basis in a country with millions of people. So, we pick an age that seems a reasonable approximation of the average, or maybe one that is a bit higher, to ensure public safety. The issue is complicated by the fact that adolescence is a relatively new concept. Originally, kids were expected to take on full adult responsibilities pretty much around the time they turned 13, maybe even sooner. So, in Romeo and Juliet, it seems perfectly reasonable to everyone that Juliet should be married off because she is almost 13! The idea that kids could stay kids until they were 18 only takes off once society becomes affluent enough that parents can afford to support their kids that long. Recently, the trend has begun to extend even further, with people in their 20s continuing to live with their parents to save on rent, essentially extending childhood into the mid-20s. At the same time, the information age is making kids seem more knowledgeable and worldly much earlier than we have been used to, creating an interesting dynamic, whereby kids grow up faster, yet paradoxically insist on staying in a childhood-like state for longer.

The best advice I can give is to make sure you pick a good thesis. I am writing a Research Paper now and I really wish I was dead set on my thesis before I went researching because I have changed it twice now and some of my research isn't that benificial.