To Drink or Not to Drink

Tim Meade, International Studies Academy, Wat it do, ISA? (February 2007):

Why is it that you are considered man enough to go off to war and fight and die for your country at the age of 18, but you are not considered man enough to drink alcohol until you are age 21 in the United States?

You can’t drink legally until you are 21, yet teenagers are considered legal adults at the age of 18. This is a very unusual law considering that you can be tried as an adult after your 18th birthday and be given jail time but you can not indulge legally in a drink with friends.

The drinking age exists because our government does not trust us to be mature enough to handle being under the influence of alcohol. Unfortunately, the youth of America prove that they are too immature to handle this privilege and that is exactly why the drinking age is where it is.

The drinking age in the United States just promotes youth to drink more because alcohol is “forbidden” to them until they are 21 years old.

People will naturally break the rules without ever thinking about it. The only thing that might help
would be to educate as many people as possible on the negative aspects of alcohol.

Children will do whatever it takes to break their parents’ laws without getting caught. If a parent exposes the child to the things that they should not be doing the child will not become curious about it later on in life.

If everyone in the world tells you that you can not drink or do drugs, you will do everything in your power to break that rule in order to decide what is so bad about it.

A high drinking age is the reason why teens drink so much.

The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 required all states to raise their minimum purchase and public possession of alcohol age to 21. States that did not comply faced a reduction in highway funds under the Federal Highway Aid Act.

The legal drinking age is the government’s attempt to safeguard its populous, but in the end it serves no real purpose. This is true because youth will always find a way to circumvent these laws without knowing that they have been set in place for their own protection.

The only solution is to leave the drinking age alone because nothing can be done that will keep youth from underage drinking.