Drinking alcoholic beverages has always been the talk around the world. In the United States of America the legal drinking age is twenty one years old. However, there have been many debates on whether the drinking age should be lowered or raised? People wonder, why raise or keep the drinking age if people under the age limit will find a way to either get alcohol or consume it. Think about this; at the age of eighteen a person is considered an adult and can vote, so why is it the drinking age is twenty one? This is a very controversial topic that is discussed almost every day by citizens around America.
According to Alexander C. Wagennaar’s work Effects of Minimum Drinking Age Laws: Review and Analyses of the Literature from 1960 to 2000, “Issue: establishing a legal drinking age of 21 is unconstitutional age discrimination” (Wagenaar). Discrimination is defined as the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex. According to laws it is illegal to discriminate against race, gender, age, and religion; so it should not be okay to set the drinking age to twenty one. According to the article Should Drinking Age Stay at 21 written by Malito Href located on ABC News’ website, “The most recent national study on youth risk behavior… found that half of the high school students aged between 12 and 16 who participated in the survey had consumed alcohol in the 30 days prior to the survey”(Href). No matter what people under the legal drinking age will find a way to consume alcohol, there is no ifs ands or buts about it.
Another thing according to Wagenaar’s book, “As a result of research evidence indicating that traffic crashes among youth increased following lowering of the legal age…” (Wagenaar). Lowering the drinking age will cause more car accidents. In Wagenaar’s article it is saying that if the drinking age were to get lowered then there are going to be more alcohol related car accidents by people who are under the age of twenty one. However, what people do not understand is that there are just as much alcohol related accidents in people over the legal drinking age. Another thing, some people believe that adults are more responsible to not drink and drive than people who are under the age of twenty one. That assumption is false. In the news almost everywhere there are adults who are either getting arrested or killed from drunk driving. In the book The Great American Football written by Douglas E. Foley says, “Consequently, a multiple-system-of-dominance was used to explore… class, gender, and racial practices… and in a way dialectally related…” (Foley 112).
To sum this entire essay up, lowering the drinking age has been a very controversial topic in today’s world and it still is. Some people will disagree and say that it should be lowered and others will say that is should remain the same. Before getting into a debate about this think about this, people that are between the ages of eighteen and twenty one are considered adults. People at eighteen are allowed to vote, get married, own a gun, but they cannot buy beer? Everyone has their own opinion on this and it still has not been solved nor will it ever be solved.
Foley, Douglas E. The Great American Football Ritual. Sociology of Sport Journal. 1990. Print.
Href, Malito. Should Drinking Age Stay at 21? ABC News. 01 June. Web.
Wagenaar, Alexander C., and Traci L. Toomey. “Effects of minimum drinking age laws: review and analyses of the literature from 1960 to 2000.” Journal of Studies on Alcohol, supplement 14 (2002): 206-225.
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