Should The Drinking Age Be Changed To 18
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 …show more content…
It is also a time when a teen’s brain is the most susceptible to changes and damage from alcohol abuse. An extraordinary high level of college and high school students drink under the age of twenty-one. Even middle school students have started to drink on a more frequent basis in the U.S. We feel that if we lower the drinking age to eighteen, this will only expose a younger generation to drinking. So instead of the seventeen and eighteen year olds drinking dangerously and illegally now, we will have thirteen and fourteen year olds participating in similar activities. Teens who begin drinking before age fifteen are five times more likely to develop alcohol dependence than those who begin drinking at age twenty-one. It’s not worth the risk to infect the young minds of Americans. Under age drinking is going to happen in the United States, but lowering the drinking age isn’t going to do anything except make it okay for younger Americans to drink. We can’t send children that
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 …show more content…
It is also a time when a teen’s brain is the most susceptible to changes and damage from alcohol abuse. An extraordinary high level of college and high school students drink under the age of twenty-one. Even middle school students have started to drink on a more frequent basis in the U.S. We feel that if we lower the drinking age to eighteen, this will only expose a younger generation to drinking. So instead of the seventeen and eighteen year olds drinking dangerously and illegally now, we will have thirteen and fourteen year olds participating in similar activities. Teens who begin drinking before age fifteen are five times more likely to develop alcohol dependence than those who begin drinking at age twenty-one. It’s not worth the risk to infect the young minds of Americans. Under age drinking is going to happen in the United States, but lowering the drinking age isn’t going to do anything except make it okay for younger Americans to drink. We can’t send children that