Legal Drinking Age Benefits

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Maintaining the Legal Drinking Age - A Benefit to All

At what age should an American citizen be allowed to legally consume alcohol? A question widely asked and debated by millions. The final decision seems to toy between 18 and 21. When discussing a topic as important as the legal drinking age one must use judgement, research, and statistics. The correct option is clear, in terms of safety, from the prevention of accidents to protecting the still developing brain, keeping the legal drinking age at 21 makes the most sense for our society. One of the largest risks from drinking at a younger age is the stunting of brain development. The ages of 15-21 are years of crucial brain development. The brain is not fully developed until at least …show more content…
One of the main benefits to having the drinking age at 21 is that it has prevented many drunk driving accidents, keeping drivers safer. “Teen drinking and driving rates have dropped by 54 percent over the last two decades, and the biggest declines were seen between 1982 and 1995, a period which included changes in the Federal law that pushed all states to increase their drinking age to 21” (Gholipour). Solid statistics show that with the change of the legal drinking age to 21, the drinking and driving rates of teens also decreased. This parallel directly shows the impact that maintaining the drinking age could have. Making the roads safer and decreasing senseless deaths due to bad decision making. “In fact, the age 21 laws have saved up to 900 lives yearly on the road, according to estimates from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration” (Chan). The fact that this law saves almost a thousand people a year is reason enough to keep the legal drinking age at …show more content…
If the drinking age was lowered to 18, alcohol would become much more easily accessible for high schoolers. In an article in Time Magazine, author Tanya Basu speaks of the likely dropout rate increase if the legal drinking age was lowered to 18. “’We saw a 3% increase in dropout rates in the whole sample,’ Plunk says. ‘In already at-risk groups [of dropping out of high school] like blacks and Hispanics, we saw a 4% increase’”(Basu). This increase in dropout rate would be a direct cause to the availability of alcohol to a younger group of teens. Also, one cannot expect an 18 year old to be able to make decisions the same as a 21 year old would in terms of them knowing if they have had too much to drink or
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