Underage Drinking

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Alcohol can be a problem in society because alcohol related accidents puts innocent people at risk and also increases the risk of public damages. People that drink have reduced productivity and efficiency at work. Crime rates have been shown to correlate with higher drinking rates. People that overconsume alcohol are more likely to be hospitalized. All of this together have costed the government over $249 billion. (“CDC - Fact Sheets-Alcohol Use And Health - Alcohol,” n.d.).
Alcohol has excessive problems on people’s health and is seen to cause 88,000 deaths (“CDC - Fact Sheets-Alcohol Use And Health - Alcohol,” n.d.). In addition, drinking can be seen as a sign that an individual is contemplating suicide because individuals may drink to numb
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In addition, approximately 30% of 12th graders have engaged in binge drinking. The reason that underage drinking is possible is because drinking is tolerated in alcoholic families and is adolescents are not criticized for it. Some adolescents may develop this problem because they have easy access to alcohol and parents do not monitor their behaviors. (“Underage Drinking: A Major Public Health Challenge -- Alcohol Alert No. 59,” n.d.). With easy access to alcohol, younger people are more likely to drink so that they can fit in or for the rush of the experience. Adolescents can express dominance through drinking and show more aggressive behavior. In addition, people may use alcohol as a solution to their problems and use it to self-medicate. Alcohol can hide the symptoms of disorders such as depression and anxiety. (Comasco, Berglund, Oreland, & Nilsson, 2010). Social media can be a contributing factor to encourage drinking since 32% of the college students used Facebook or Twitter on the day of a huge drinking event. Among the specific heavy drinker population 46% are seen to have used these sites, but only 4% used it for arrangement of safe transportation(Whitehill, Pumper, & Moreno, …show more content…
In addition, there should be reduced number of retail outlets that sale alcohol to make it inconvenient to people and educational activities that discourages people from drinking. Rising the cost has been seen to be ineffective because rates of alcoholism continue to rise (Vladeck & Weiss, 1975).
In addition, some of the public health policies that have been implemented were raising legal drinking ages in all states to 21, which has decreased the date rate by 20,000 lives in a 25 year span. Another public policy that has been implemented is a zero-tolerance laws which makes it illegal to have greater than 0.02 in blood, which has helped to reduce crashes by 20%. There has been an intervention program such as Project Northland that has showed positive effect in the 11th and 12th grades that reduced the sources of alcohol (“Underage Drinking: A Major Public Health Challenge -- Alcohol Alert No. 59,”