Essay Against Lowering The Drinking Age

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Pages: 4

In the United States, there are some rather alarming statistics when it comes to underage drinking, such as “ninety-five percent of those who will be alcohol consumers in their lifetime take their first drink before age 21, and fifty percent of 18- to 20-year-olds consume alcohol regularly” (McCardell). Does this mean that we should lower the drinking age in this country? I think not.
Drinking is always cause for a lot of debate, whether the subject is the tremendous amount of tragic drunk driving accidents, the health benefits and risks of alcohol, or what I will be covering in this essay, the legal drinking age. There has certainly been much controversy about the drinking age in the United States; we are one of only twelve countries that have such a high legal drinking age. 61% of the countries in the world have an minimum legal drinking age of 18 or 19,
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The way it stands now, in order to drink teenagers must obtain a fake ID, or get others to purchase alcohol for them, which is not only against the law but is perhaps more dangerous due to less regulation. However, not all adolescents are willing to go to such limits in order to drink illegally, and I am partially speaking for myself here being that I am under the legal age. In an article from the American Journal of Public Health, the authors state that, “Approximately three quarters of college students aged 18–20 years drank alcohol in the past year, although they are less likely than their peers of legal drinking age to drink” (Wechsler, Nelson 987). Therefore, I do think that lowering the drinking age would in fact, be less safe. It could cause more teenagers to drink because they can do so without any legal repercussions, and this would lead to an increase in the amount of binge drinking and other related