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Ending Underage Drinking by Making It Legal. Should underage drinking laws be changed. [5]
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"Ending Underage Drinking by Making It LegalFor
teens, making the right decision over drinking responsibly versus drinking to get
drunk, has
it's(Avoid using contractions in formal academic writing.) downfalls in many ways.
Why submerge the younger generation to an adult level that will be too much for them to handle
?Alcohol can be a deadly weapon if not used correctly, in moderation
, and by those who are responsible
enough to know when they have reached their intake limit.
What about the biological end of this? Is drinking at younger and younger ages harmful to a younger person's health?There are strong believers that would like to see the age limit lowered despite it's many
dangerous values.
The Amethyst Group
, which supports informed and unimpeded
debate on the 21 year-old drinking age
and which consists of chancellors,
as well as college and university
presidents across the United States
, have signed their names to a public
statement stating that despite the minimum legal drinking age of 21, there are a great number of
young people continuing to binge drink on many campuses.
The Amethyst group states that if people under 21 years old are deemed capable of
voting, paying taxes, signing contracts, enlisting in the military and serving on juries, why should
they be told that they are not mature enough to drink. The answer is simple, they are still
developing and growing from young human beings to adults. Children and teens need a solid
foundation from adults. They need stability, a place to call home, to be focused on their
classwork , building friendships
, and looking forward to their future instead of partying and drinking.
The Amethyst Initiative group is counting on elected officials to weigh all facts and
consequences of the current alcohol policies and urges officials to invite new ideas on how to
best prepare young adults to make responsible choices about alcohol use.
In reference to the Alcohol Policies Project, a public survey was conducted between
April and October 1997. The survey was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and
prepared by the University of Minnesota Alcohol Epidemiology Program. This survey was
designed to measure the public's attitudes concerning the issues and policies surrounding youth
access to alcohol. The finding
s were astonishing. 80% of adults favor a law that sets the minimum
age to sell or serve alcoholic beverages at 21. The public concerns regarding traffic deaths was
polled at 92% of adults that have heard news that youth drivers are involved in traffic deaths.
79% of adults agree that advertisements for alcohol beverages should be restricted to make
drinking less appealing to kids. Advertisement for alcohol beverages increase how much people
drink and 58% of adults agree with this statement.
Lowering the minimum drinking age is definitely a bad idea. In 1984, Congress passed
the National Minimum Purchase Age Act, this act was passed to encourage each state to enact a
minimum legal purchase age of 21 by the year 1986. The results were very impressive with an
estimated 1,071 lives saved in 1987 alone. From 1975-1996, the estimated number of lives saved
increased to nearly 17,000. Additionally a 63% decline in alcohol-related crashes among youth
drivers since 1982
was documented . The findings also show that while DUI arrests decreased so did youth
suicides, marijuana use, crime
, and alcohol consumption.
The behavior of those 18 years old will have a negative effect on those younger than
them. The younger generation will typically imitate the practices of those who are slightly older
and will be more likely to drink. The earlier a person begins to use alcohol, the greater the risk of
substance abuse and brain
damage. If the legal drinking age is lowered the level of
alcoholic dependency increases
, as do traffic accidents, vandalism
, and arrest rates.
I strongly oppose lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18. I believe that by lowering
the drinking age, this will have more of a negative than positive effect on our youth and our
country. For instance, on a national average, someone is killed by a drunk driver every 40
minutes, should that rate be allowed to rise? In the United States the public spends an estimated
$114 billion dollars in alcohol related accidents and deaths. Teen drivers account for a high
percentage of alcohol-related crashes three in every ten Americans.
I believe that education is a key factor in keeping youth from becoming addicted to
alcohol and suffering from possible tragic effects by not being responsible. The AA (Alcoholics
Anonymous)
organization and other organizations like it should be active participants in our school system
s . When
someone sees or hears how alcohol has impacted, changed
, or
destroyed lives , this makes
people want to be different and to make a positive change in their lives. By
bringing the truth to
the
youths daily on how alcohol effects people, this may help to detour them from ever
using it."
Good job. Some corrections, but you've got a good argument. Make sure you cite all of the statistics in this essay to maintain its strength. Nice work.