Legal drinking age: A Rough Draft
Lindsay Steinhoff
ENG 102-27172
Jean Akers
Statistics show that at least 72% of teenagers have consumed more than a few sips of alcohol by the end of high school. In fact in the past 30 days 17.4% of teens have binged on alcohol in the US. ("Fact Sheet for Underage Drinking." CDC)Most teens will graduate at the age of 18, are they considered mature enough to drink responsibly? If not then why isn't the legal age of an adult considered 21 years old? According to Dictionary.com the definition of an adult is: A person who has attained the age of maturity as specified by law". (2012, Archer MD)
At the age of 18 an ADULT can apply for a credit card be approved and put themselves in debt. An adult can go to war and give their lives for this country and make this decision on their own. However, an adult cannot make the decision to consume alcohol. Should the drinking age be lowered? Ruth Engs a professor at Indiana University thinks so. Her idea is letting young adults drink in controlled environments for example university functions and pubs. "In these situations responsible drinking could be taught through role modeling and educational programs. Mature and sensible drinking behavior would be expected" (Engs, 1998). She explains that in her research underage drinking is appealing like a forbidden fruit per say. Which is true for human nature especially younger people if it's not aloud they want to do it more. Telling a young person that has never drank before that they cannot drink, makes them want to know why so they choose to explore and see for themselves. Her research showed a decrease in drinking and driving around the 1980's but increased after the law was changed in 1987 stating you must be 21 years old to purchases and consume alcohol. Other factors such as alcohol induced fighting and lower grades increased after the law was passed.
Dr Dale Archer seems to believe along the lines of Ruth. He states " Within all 50 states, 18-year-olds can apply for a credit card, legally marry without parental consent, divorce, rent, purchase, sign a binding contract, vote, serve on a jury and serve in the military. If charged with a crime, the 18-year-old is no longer tried in juvenile court; he's tried as an adult. In essence, an 18, 19 and 20-year-old can do everything a 21-year-old can do, except drink alcohol. " (2012, Archer MD) His biggest argument is that of respect. He states when an adult is told he or she is not allowed or presumed not mature enough they will prove their immaturity and lose any respect for the people standing behind the argument of their inability. In this case it would be the law makers and law enforcement. A lack of respect can lead to the mindset of anarchy, per say. When a teenager does illegally drink he or she will drink to excess knowing that they cannot do it all the time. These teens will drink regardless of law especially if they believe it to be unfair. Archer brings up the idea of a "drinking license" or a class in high school similar to that of a heath class, exploring the effects of alcohol on the body also focusing on drunk driving.
John Cloud a writer for TIME magazine explores this idea by John McCardell Jr. in more depth. John McCardell Jr., an esteemed historian of the American South and former head of Middlebury College, founded Choose Responsibility in 2006 to argue in favor of licensing 18-to-20-year-olds to drink after they have completed an exhaustive 42 hours of instruction in the history, chemistry, psychology and sociology of alcohol - which could even include sitting in on an AA session for three hours. (2012, Cloud) McCardell compared it to a driving learners permit. Are 42 hours of instruction going to be enough to get through to our young people? It seems to me that that class would compare to that of driving school were in all honesty no one really takes away any of the crucial information that was intended to be learned. He argues that "forced alcohol consumption behind the closed doors of [dorms] and fraternity basements. Always unsupervised, done in secret and too often excessive, this style of drinking has no doubt been responsible for the alarming rise in rates of so-called 'binge' drinking seen at colleges." (2012, Cloud) McCardell seems to be a logical thinker and it makes you wonder if something as simple as a "drinking course" could ever change our statistics of underage drinking but if you look at them they have not increased in a major was since the law has changed in 1987. According to the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future study, the proportion of those 19- to 22-year-olds who reported consuming five or more drinks in a row in the two weeks prior to being surveyed actually fell from 40.7% in 1984 to 38.1% in 2006. And no researchers have documented an increase in the percentage of alcohol-poisoning deaths among college students, although the raw number has probably increased with the growing college population. (2012, Cloud) In this piece cloud has made such great points.
I do believe that alcohol consumption changes and can be completely different from one teen to the next. However, I have seen the difference in teens that are sheltered and "protected" from the ideas of drinking while other parenting styles allow their children to somewhat explore alcohol and all the details pertaining to it. It's almost like teaching only abstinence in a sex education class. Those kids will never be equipped with the information and tools to have safe sex. When we could teach our kids how to, when they are ready, have safe sex and protect themselves. The CDC helps prove my point. "Excessive alcohol consumption contributes to more than 4,700 deaths among underage youth, that is, persons less than 21 years of age, in the United States each year." (2011,CDC) These statistics are a wakeup call. Even our so called responsible 21 years and older adults should have had these information courses. "There are approximately 1.5 billion episodes of binge drinking among persons aged 18 years or older in the United States annually, most of which involve adults age 26 years and older." (2011, CDC)
Michael F. Lovenheim a graduate from Cornell University with a degree in policy analysis and management also helps support the fact that young people need more education on alcohol. Michael argues that his research states a legal restriction on drinking does not reduce youth involvement in fatal accidents and, for 18 and 19-year-old drivers. Fatal accident involvement actually increases. (2010, Lovenheim) I for one found this out the hard way. This week my nineteen year old cousin was extremely intoxicated and im sure in his eyes he seemed..."invincible." He got in his car and proceeded to drive the icy roads of Montana drunk. Mind you these roads are dangerous enough in the middle of winter for a sober driver. My cousin never made it home that night, he killed himself driving drunk after a night of binge drinking. Thankfully He was the only one in the car and another car was not involved. "Our results imply the effect of lowering the MLDA in select states, such as has been proposed in Vermont, could lead to sizeable increases in teenage involvement in fatal accidents due to evasion of local alcohol restrictions." (2010, Lovenheim)
MADD is another organization that supports keeping the legal drinking age 21. The age limit for alcohol is based on research which shows that young people react differently to alcohol. Teens get drunk twice as fast as adults, but have more trouble knowing when to stop. Teens naturally overdo it and binge more often than adults. (2012, MADD.) All of these sources have fair arguments and are not just ridiculous notion without any support. However no one is arguing to increase the legal age of an adult. Those kids that are too immature and inexperienced to drink are going into the military, risking their lives. They are ruining their credit score making it impossible to buy a car or get a new house. These kids are getting married and divorced all before they are even "allowed" to drink. There is no argument that the legal drinking age should stay the same, our young people have proven that. But I do believe that most eighteen year olds are not mature enough to be an "adult" although I see no one arguing and fighting for that.
Works Cited
"Fact Sheet for Underage Drinking." CDC.
Cloud, John. "Should the drinking age be lowered?".
Engs, Ruth. "Why the drinking age should be lowered, An opinion based on research." Indiana .
MD, Dale Archer. "Pros and Cons of drinking at 18" .
"The fatal toll of driving to drink: The effect of minimum legal drinking age evasion on traffic fatalities. ." Journal of Health Economics (2012): 67-77.
Please review honestly.
Three areas I know I need work on are grammar, run-on sentences, and making smooth transitions between paragraphs.
You have a very good argument in all the other activities that "adults" are eligible to participate in at age 18. As you mentioned, joining the army, smoking, having legal sex, etc. are all very excellent ways to potentially destroy your life, and all are available at age 18.
Perhaps put this through a grammar-check filter. Your grammar isn't bad on the whole, but there are a few areas where you may have made typos with punctuation.
Also, per say is incorrect. The correct spelling is per se .
