Drinking Age Debate

John Smith

Negative: The legal drinking age in the U.S. should be lowered to 18.

Introduction

We believe that the drinking age across the United States should stay at 21 years of age. Several states are currently petitioning that the drinking age be lowered; however, we find this to be dangerous and extremely unnecessary.

The first reason why we would like the drinking age to stay the same is because of history. From the end of Prohibition (when alcohol was not allowed to be manufactured or sold in the United States) drinking ages were determined by the states. Many of the states set the age at 21, while several lowered the age to 18 for the purchase of beer. This was fairly consistent until the emergence of the baby boom generation and the Vietnam War. From 1970 through 1975, nearly all states lowered their legal ages of adulthood, thirty of which included their legal drinking ages, typically from 21 to 18. The reason most states lowered the drinking age was because they felt it was wrong to send 18 year olds to war, but not let them drink. The drinking age in the majority of these states stayed at 18 until 1984, when The National Minimum Drinking Age Act was passed by the federal government. The actual bill required "all States to raise their minimum drinking age to 21 within 2 years or lose a portion of their Federal-aid highway funds; and encourage States, through incentive grants programs, to pass mandatory sentencing laws to combat drunk driving." The portion of the Federal-aid highway funds that would be lost if the state didn't comply amounted to five percent in the third year and ten percent in the fourth year.

Unfortunately, the lower drinking age begin to take a toll on the nation's highways. The number of alcohol-related traffic fatalities began to rise at alarming rates, and a high percentage of those fatalities involved young drivers under the influence. The late seventies and early eighties were marked with an excess of highly publicized studies that claimed teenage alcohol use was out of control and was turning into a major problem. Many parents started becoming concerned with level of careless drinking by teenagers. Once the law was passed, however, there was a noticeable difference in alcohol related deaths. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that raising the drink age to 21 has reduced traffic fatalities involving 18 to 20 year old drivers by 13 percent and has saved over an estimated 20,000 lives since 1975. Twenty of twenty-nine studies conducted between 1981 and 1992 reported significant decreases in traffic crashes and crash fatalities following an increase in drinking age. Why wouldn’t you want to save more lives whenever possible? Since the drinking age was raised, thousands of lives have been saved. We see no reason to revert back to a drinking age where 18 year olds are allowed to drink legally considering the damage that it may cause.

Speaking of damage, more specifically to the brain….Adolescence is a time of brain development, physical changes, and social changes. It is also a time when a teen’s brain is the most susceptible to changes and damage from alcohol abuse.