Underage Drinking In College

Neal Hartman
Mr. Chojnowski
English102-05
30 October, 2012

Underage Drinking in College

Underage drinking in college is a common occurrence and has been for a long time, most people think it is just what college kids do and that it is something that it okay. The truth is that for many students from the age of 17 to 20 the drinking isn’t just distracting kids from their work it could be hurting them in many other ways. Most of the problem isn’t just the fact that the kids are all drinking but it is how and where they drink, most underage kids are not going out to bars or to mature parties where getting extremely drunk usually isn’t what happens. But instead kids are going to house parties and playing games that involve drinking
Kids will usually go out to a party already slightly intoxicated and then when they get there they will either play drinking games or just chug large amounts of beer and liquor. And to many kids it is “cool” to be very intoxicated or to drink large amounts of beer or liquor. Drinking large amounts of alcohol can also cause blackouts; which are when you can’t remember what happened for a certain amount of time caused by drinking too much. Blackouts are not like the long term memory loses but to think that for one night you don’t know what happened to you because you can’t remember. Just think if you have gotten into a fight or got into a situation where someone could rape you or hurt you in a severe way and you wouldn’t be able to remember any of
The price of the alcohol is a common deciding factor; some students don’t have the extra money to get the alcohol, when they need that money to go to books or to get food for their room. “The most widely used policy tool in the campaign against youth and young adult alcohol abuse has been higher minimum legal drinking ages.” (Chaloupka, Wechsler 1) The previous quote is saying that if the minimum drinking age was raised than there would be less drinking by young adults, and college kids. Which may or may not be true because of the fact that if kids can figure out ways to get alcohol now then there are most likely ways that they will be able to get it even if the minimum age is raised. With the age set a 21 in the United States some college students are of age and are able to buy alcohol for younger kids, and that could lead to the kids doing something stupid that will get the both of them in