18: The Legal Drinking Age

Imagine youre at a party and you just see a kid just passed out on the couch. Would you take any serious
action like say: call the police or call DPS? Chances are you may not. Now what if you knew that that
person was forced to drink 10 gallons of alcohol? Would you still call someone? What if that persons
eyes start to roll back? You may or you may not. Well for the case of Gordon Bailey no one called until it
was too late. His friends decided to call 911 after 9 hours after he was dead. His step father argues that
because the drinking age is 21 that his brothers hesitated to call 911 until it was obviously too late. He
argues that if the drinking age was 18 that they would have contacted the proper authorities earlier. Now
especially after this weekend where we all probably saw underage drinking going on around us so we can
easily relate to the topic of underage drinking and the legal drinking age. According to data collected 95%
of this class reported that you first drank alcohol before the age of 18 or at 18. Underage drinking mostly
takes place during college and especially abusive drinking. Today Im going to show you a way of
decreasing the chances of abusive drinking which in turn may aid the lowering of the drinking age.
Before I discuss what we can do to address the issue, let me first talk about what is going on around
college campuses where most of the underage drinking is taking place

According to the documentary released in 2008 44% of college students nationwide binge drink
o

This means that on average at least once in the past two weeks men have had at least 5 drinks
in a row

Women have had 4 drinking in a row

22% of students meet the medical criteria of alcohol abuse

Out of those students that binge drink approximately

40% have 5-9 drinks

25% 11-15 drinks

20% 15+ drinks

Nationwide approximately 700,000 injuries occur due to alcohol abuse

1,700 students die every year due to alcohol abuse

11% of all college students are sexually assaulted due to alcohol

In 2009, The Surgeon general says that about 3,0000 kids under the age of 21 die every year due to
non-drunk driving incidents

Researchers have found that now people arent drinking with each other they are drinking against
each other and playing drinking games makes students not think about moderation and see how far
they can go

Now let me discuss the major reason against the lowering of the drinking age: drunken driving

According to multiple sources once the legal drinking age was raised to 21 in the 1984 the
number of fatalities due to drunk driving has decreased.

Now this doesnt mean that alcohol use has decreased

According to John McCardell Jr. the legal age of 21 has only driving underage drinking and
abusive drinking underground
o

In places such as basements, frat houses, locked dorm rooms even townhouses on
campus are used for underage drinking

John McCardell was the president of Middlebury College and is now the head of Choose
Responsibility
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The sites description states that CHOOSE RESPONSIBILITY is a nonprofit

organization founded to stimulate informed and dispassionate public discussion about
the presence of alcohol in American culture and to consider policies that will
effectively empower young adults age 18 to 20 to make mature decisions about the
place of alcohol in their own lives.

He believes that since the drinking age is 21 the under 21 population sees alcohol as a
forbidden fruit

And in the documentary that is clearly shows with multiple students stating that they drinking
to get drunk

I can clearly relate to this because I come from a country where the legal drinking age is 18
and I drink for a different reason

Also it doesnt seem fair that for someone in this country at the age of 18 to be able to
o

Vote

Serve in the military

And if you violate it, the license is taken away

One of the few chiefs of police in Boulder, Colorado Mark Beckner agrees that the drinking
age should be 18 he states:
o

Picture this a couple getting married at 18, and they arent allowed to drink on their
wedding night, that just doesnt sound right. I mean if they have come to the
conclusion that they want to spend the rest of their life together why they cant have
champagne.

Now what John McCardell proposes is teach high school classes such as the chemistry of
alcohol, physical effects of abuse and sitting in on AA meeting and passing an exam to get a
license to drink
o

If the government believe that at the age of 18 they are mature enough to
choose who the leader of this country and stand in the front lines defending
this country how is it that they cannot drink a beer

The abuse and over consumption and DUI driving those are the areas we gotta focus
our efforts not on chasing kids around trying to give them a ticket for having a beer in
their hand

Even some colleges like Dartmouth, Virginia Tech, and Duke in 2009 have tried to petition
the drinking age to be lowered because alcohol is prevalent on their campuses and that causes
uproar.

The proposal that I am proposing does not go directly in line with McCardell but it does bring up the
same idea of educating people

Before I do though I want to stat that as of 2011 there are 16 states that have no restrictions to
underage drinking in terms of reasons and places.

I believe that it is the parents responsibility to teach their children how do drink responsibly in
their home.
o

Panamanians are a great example of this. Coming from Panama where the legal age is 18
I was brought up drinking round my parents and family members when I was 14.

I believe that only being able to drink around your parents and family members and learning how
to drink and not to drink to get drunk or to black out is one of the best ways of getting the
drinking age lowered
o

Because if you think about it if you start drinking controllably with someone supervising
you what it does is it takes the curiosity and the idea that drinking before 21 isnt that big
of a deal

In turn what this can do is make people under 21 not think of drinking in excess
as such a cool thing to do

And if this is implemented then you could see the number of injuries, casualties,
abusive drinking drop because the mentality of why you drink will change.

And in turn this will cause law makers to see that young adults are making better
decision and can handle alcohol at a young age and will be willing to lower the
drinking age.

In conclusion, underage drinking will continue to happen no matter what the legal age is, but what we can
try and stop is the abuse. We can prevent tragedies like that of Gordon across the country if we are just
taught. Parents are the biggest influence on a child and parents can get to children like no one else can and
they should be the ones to educate their children on how to drink and that way they will also sleep better
at night when their son or daughter if off in college because they know that they have taught their child
how to behave. What will you do when its your turn to be a parent?

Work Cited
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http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=667917&page=1#.UXA12Uqy53c
http://www.cognac.com/15-reasons-why-drinking-age-should-be-18/
http://drinkingage.procon.org/
http://www.indiana.edu/~engs/articles/cqoped.html
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1812397,00.html
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/05/28/do-we-need-to-redefine-adulthood/let-themdrink-at-18-with-a-learners-permit
http://www.statisticbrain.com/car-crash-fatality-statistics-2/
http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/LegalDrinkingAge.html
http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/haze
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA-91_LoKIw&feature=player_embedded#!
http://drinkingage.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=003966