Why The Drinking Age Should Be Lowered To 18

There are many arguments on why the legal drinking age should be lowered to 18. To some lowering the drinking age to 18 makes sense to them and to others it doesn’t make sense, which is true. Most people believe that if you are old enough to vote and enlist in the Army or the Navy then you are old enough to drink which is wrong. Not only does lowering the legal drinking age put the drinker at harm but also the people around them. There are some many reasons why the legal drinking age should not be lowered never the less three valid and proven reasons why the legal drinking age should not be lowered is, the effect on the brain, the safety of the drinker and the people around them and a number of deaths will increase.
In July of 1984 the national
For some people, brain development may be complete prior to age 25, while for others it may end after age 25. The mid-20s or “25” is just an average age given as checkpoint for when the brain has likely become mature (Mental Health Daily).” From the quote above neurologist have come to conclude that the average human brain is not fully developed until the age of 25. With this information in mind, it is hard to suggest lowering the drinking age to 18, since at the age of 18 most teenagers are at the point of their lives where they think they know everything just because by law they are considered a legal adult. Even though they believe they are grown psychologically they are not 9 out of 10 times most 18 years old don’t even know what they want in life and are not mature enough to handle the effects alcohol has on the brain. The age of 18 is they age where a lot of stupid decision are made due to the fact that the law grants us permission to leave the custody of our parent. The problem with this mentality is that at the age of 18 the brain is making so many impulse decision due to the new-found freedom, this is without any influence of alcohol, however when you add the influence of alcohol we are looking at a different picture altogether, seeing that when someone consumes alcohol the first part of the brain it affects is the
If the drinking age was changed from 21 to 18 the number of arrests would skyrocket. “In 2011, at least 23% of auto collisions involved cell phones (Texting and driving safety).” Teenagers are already distracted behind the wheel when we add the influence of alcohol not only will the teen be a danger to their self but they will also be a danger to others on the road. One quote that truly sparks the fire in this argument is “it is not (usually) alcohol that kills, it is drunken driving that kills (Eastman).” This quote truly speaks volume in this argument because when you look at this statist of car accidents from the CDC “In 2014, 2,270 teens in the United States ages 16–19 were killed and 221,313 were treated in emergency departments for injuries suffered in motor vehicle crashes.1 That means that six teens ages 16–19 died every day from motor vehicle injuries” you can see that teens have a high risk of getting in accidence because of so many distractions from texting, listening to music, or when they are with a group of friends, now when we add alcohol as a contributing factor we will see that no one will be safe on the road, because in the quote mentioned above alcohol is not what kills it the drunken driver and when we drink we lose the mental capacity of what makes sense and what doesn’t we believe we can do things we