Drinking Age Lowered To 18

Legal Drinking Age

One of the biggest arguments that you will find going on today is, what the legal drinking age in The United States of America should be. Today in the USA the legal drinking age is twenty-one, but why twenty-one why not eighteen or thirty? Why have a drinking age of twenty-one in this country when there are over two hundred other countries that have lower drinking ages, and none that have higher? Who gets to decide the age at which someone is mature enough to consume alcohol? All these questions and more have been used to both keep the drinking age twenty-one and lower it to eighteen.

Today in America you can not go through high school with out being put in a situation to consume alcohol. Ruth Clifford Engs an applied health sciences professor at Indiana University states that, 88% of high school seniors have tried alcohol, 66% of high school seniors are regular drinkers, and 22% are frequent binge drinkers. (Ruth Clifford Engs) These stats are very frightening. The fact that more than half of high school seniors are drinking illegally on a regular basis and one in four is binge drinking or drinking to get drunk. The biggest reason for these statistics is the age that these students are in their senior year. Now at the age of seventeen and eighteen these students want to be with there friends and socialize with many people. They want to have a good time and feel free. They no longer want to stay at someone's house and watch a movie or play video games under parental supervision. They have grown up and want to go out and party with there friends all night. These students no longer want to be held down by there parents rules and want to be treated as adults. This group thinks that there is an adult world and a kid world. They no longer want to be in the kid world and want to enter the adult world. Katha Pollitt in Why Boys Don't Play with Dolls says "tells adults that the adult world--in which moms and dads still play by man of the old rules even as they question and fidget and chafe against them - is the way it's supposed to be."(Katha Pollitt, p. 225) The adult world is the correct world and drinking takes place in the adult world. They drink to try and gain access to this exclusive world. Another reason for all this drinking in high school goes hand in hand with the senior slide. Hubert B. Herring in On the Eve of Extinction: Four Years of High School, writes that the senior slide revolves mostly around getting into college. Herring says, "If the check's in the mail in December, and if you're already picking out those extra-long dorm sheets and pestering your parents for the very best laptop, it's hard to keep up the grind come March." (Herring, p. 348) By December you are no longer worried about your grades and your "months-long graduation party" (Herring, p. 348) has begun. Also these high scholars have spent there entire life seeing alcohol advertisements which are geared towards the age group they are now in. They see college students out drinking having a good time with there friends and want to do that. Also teenagers are famous for making their own rules and breaking the ones that are put in front of them, so is it any surprise that they are breaking this law. Because of all of these factors this age group instead of staying in and watching a movie are going out, partying, and drinking with their friends. I had this same exact experience. Freshman and sophomore year of high school consisted of going over to some ones house and having a Halo 2 tournament or going to see a movie. However junior year rolled around and this was no longer fun. My friends and I wanted to go out and do something. We wanted to go party and about once or twice a month would end up at a party drinking. By the time I was a senior I was going to parties and drinking almost every weekend along with not only my friends but most of my high school. This is the reality the times have changed and the laws need to change with the times.

Even though drinking in high school is very popular it is not even close to as popular as it is in a college atmosphere. These high scholars when at college no longer have their parents looking after them and can make up there own rules. Since these parents are no longer there to look after them, a lot of college students make many bad decisions including binge drinking their freshman year. In fact youth rights, an organization whose mission is to give more rights to youth and end any ageism, states that 43.6% of college student's weather over or underage take part in binge drinking. However, Underage College Students' Drinking Behavior, Access to Alcohol, and the Influence of Deterrence Policies, an essay by four professors at Harvard University, states that the percent of these students who are underage has gone up. Also underage drinkers report that they are drinking more to get drunk. Because of this underage drinkers report having more negative effects from drinking such as missing class, having casual sex, and making other decision they later regretted. (Henry Wechsler PhD, and youthrights.org) This means that underage drinking is on the rise and is getting more dangerous. It also means that this pattern is likely to continue and drinking in college is only going to get worse. They dont know how to drink and have a good time with out making a fool of themselves. Underage drinking in college is nothing new and has come to be accepted by much of the general public. I can not tell you how many times I have heard "college is the best four years of your life, live it up." College has become a place were binge drinking is acceptable and as long as your having a good time it doesn't matter what you do.

The drinking age has always been a state matter. It was up to the states to decide what age their citizens would be able to drink at. If this is the case then how did a nation wide drinking age of twenty-one come into place? In 1984 congress passed the highway funding bill which never would have been mentioned today except it had one clause that changed everything. It stated that if a state did not change its drinking age to 21 then it would not receive its funding from congress. Stephen Gettinger, a writer for the Congressional Quarterly, estimates that this would amount to $260 million in 1987 and $529 million in 1988. (Stephen Gettinger) The national government had no right to go and tell the states what there drinking age should be. The drinking age has always been a state matter and by passing this bill the national government took this right ruining the check and balance system our government is based on.

So why is the drinking age twenty-one? Well the very same can be said for having it eighteen however there are many more reasons for it to be eighteen. The one reason that everyone