Book Report

Andrew hand Persuasive essay hand 1 Reed honors Lit.

Period 5

The current drinking age is an outrage, all it does is let the desire to drink build up in an adolescent and once they reach the age of twenty one they abuse alcohol tremendously there has even been a very serious problem In which young drinkers don’t drink all the time but when they do its almost like a binge and their body’s take the effect of a life long heavy drinker and many die. And with this and many other problems with the drinking age I believe that the drinking age should be lowered to eighteen, and also that parents can give small amounts of certain alcohol to their children too teach them to respect alcohol and not abuse it. I believe that for the welfare of our children and the people around them that the drinking age should be lowered to eighteen and the laws should be more lenient so parents can teach the children not to abuse the substance.

When a teenager reaches driving and smoking age the desire to drink becomes massive because they are declared adults and can smoke and drive, they ask why as adults they are still restricted. The current law in the United States is that “any person under the age of 21 is not allowed to drink alcohol and to do so is against the law (www.nhtsa.dot.gov)”. why is it that the government will hand you a smoke, give you a 2 ton killing machine, and strap you with an AK-47 and send you to Iraq but they wont let you have a beer, and almost all the rights you are given at 18 are more dangerous than drinking. Because they don’t think very critically about this issue.

A staggering 4 million people die from smoking each year, 1.2 from car accidents and less than 200,000 from drinking (wikipedia.com). In the US alone 440,000 die each year from smoking (American cancer society/ cancer.com). I see no reason that our government would give people this real killer at 18 and not twenty-one? And emotionally this hurts parent sending children to college then finding out what really goes on there.

The strength it takes any parent to overcome the loss of a child amazes me and I believe that all the anger towards drugs is misdirected toward alcohol when the real anger should point at the number 2 killer in the country smoking and if also the smoking and drinking age would be switched then the worlds parents would have to suffer though less.