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Wesley Lynde

UWRT 1102-026

Professor Douglas

February 9, 2017

Twenty-One or Below: Should the Legal Drinking Age in America Be Lowered?

During the time that America was involved in the Vietnam War, there were many social

issues that were called into question, one of them being the legal voting age. At the time, you

were not allowed to vote for the president or any representatives unless you were twenty-one

years of age or older but the age for young men to register to be drafted into the military was set

at eighteen. Many people argued that if you are legally old enough to serve your country in war

than you ought to be able to vote, and eventually the voting age was lowered. Today, and for

roughly the past forty years, a similar debate has been spoken about; how old should you be to be

able to buy and drink alcoholic beverages? In a 2012 article written by Tom Price for CQ

Researcher titled, Alcohol Abuse: Can underage drinking be curbed?, the social issues

surrounding alcohol consumption by minors are explored in an effort to find the most effective

methods to stop underage drinking. My second article is a scientific paper about an experiment

conducted in New Zealand (where the legal drinking age is eighteen) looking at the effects of

alcohol, age, and the number of passengers on fatal driving injury. Reviewed and accepted by the

scientific community, the authors predicted that drinking by teenagers had a greater effect on

fatal car crashes and even made legal implications on policy. While on two different matters

within the same subject, these articles had some similarities but brought diverse and useful

information. Since the legal drinking age in the United States is twenty-one, many people
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question if it should be lowered to eighteen since that is the age you are considered an adult.

The American people have always loved their alcohol, making it one of the larger money

making industries in the country, but that of course comes with consequences for alcohol

abusers. While abuse has declined in recent years for the people as a whole, one group continues

to show a steady amount of underage and binge drinkers: college students. It is well known and

well documented that college students the heaviest drinkers, even drinking more that non

students that are in the same age group (Price 501). In his rather lengthy article filled to the brim

with facts and figures as well as commentary from leading experts on the subject, Tom Price

tries to get to the bottom of what causes underage people to abuse alcohol and find that most

productive ways of preventing it from happening. These include lowering the legal drinking age,

making alcohol more difficult to obtain, and nixing it from campuses all together. For the

readers purposes, the section about lowering the drinking age contained loads of solid, useful

information. In one passage Price quotes the National Youth Rights Association Vice President

stating, What does it say about us as a country that were willing to send our young people

overseas to fight and defend our freedom, but when they get home we target them as not

responsible enough to enjoy a drink with friends and family? (505). In addition to

thought-provoking writing, the author incorporates vivid illustrations, charts, and graphs that are

easy to understand and makes the content of the article even more comprehendible, such as graph

comparing teen drinking in America, where the drinking age is twenty-one, to Europe where the

legal age in eighteen in all countries (Price 508). This article does a fantastic job at providing

thoughts from both sides of each argument, making the audience think about issues in different

lights, including an entire page dedicated to a pro-con debate between two well-credentialed men
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on the question if raising the tax on alcohol would reduce abuse (Price 517). It is honestly

difficult to find any legitimate weaknesses within this exceptionally written, well-referenced and

well-thought-out publication.

No matter what the age of the person drinking, driving drunk is by far the most dangerous

and deadliest thing a person can do. In a paper titled The influence of alcohol, age and number of

passengers on the night-time risk of driver fatal injury in New Zealand, three scientists examine

how different age groups drinking and driving correlate with fatal car injuries. It is important to

understand that the legal drinking age in New Zealand is eighteen years old. Shorter in length,

the reader gets a large variety of numbers, charts and graphs having to do with things like Blood

Alcohol Content (BAC) levels, the age groups of the samples, and the number of passengers that

the driver had in the vehicle. In the conclusion section of the paper, the researchers were able to

state with confidence that, A teenager with a BAC of 30 mg/dl carrying two or more passengers

has a risk that is thirty-four times the risk of a sober driver aged thirty and over driving with one

passenger. (Keall 60). The passage then goes on to question if the age limit for drinking in New

Zealand is appropriate. With that being said, it must be noted that the sample size that the study

was able to obtain for the teenage age group was probably too scarce to allow for an extremely

accurate risk curve, but shortly after the author points out that a better risk curve for younger

drivers can be found in similar studies (Keall 58). Therefore, with limited information pertaining

to the line of inquiry in question, this article has to be deemed less useful for research.

Author Tom Price of the Alcohol Abuse article did an absolutely wonderful job of

conveying the issues surrounding underage drinking and binge drinking, as well as exploring

several real, practical solutions that have the potential to make a positive effect on the issue.
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Using ethos and logos appeals, the author was able to provide many real and logical insights into

the issue. Price went above and beyond by providing everything from real news stories, data

from scientific studies, a fairly extensive history of alcohol in America, and colorful pictures and

images that connect to what the audience is reading. But perhaps the most important and relevant

reason that this article is superior is that fact that it remains neutral by giving the reader both

sides of the story and forces them to think about what they are reading. Among the many cultural

issues covered, one involves a group of college presidents calling for the legal drinking age to be

lowered to eighteen as it is in Europe and other places around the world, citing that fact that

young people should not be uneducated about safe drinking practices and instead be taught

earlier how to drink safely and not to excess. While the scientific study does not specifically

mention anything about Americans, it is relevant because of the fact that the legal drinking age is

lower and can be looked to as a data source for the United States in making a decision on the

issue.
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Works Cited

Keall, Michael D., William J. Frith, and Tui L. Patterson. The Influence of Alcohol, Age, and

Number of Passengers on the Night-time Risk of Driver Fatal Injury in New Zealand.

ScienceDirect. Accident Analysis & Prevention, Jan. 2004. Web. 31 Jan. 2017.

McCartt, A. T., Hellinga, L. A., & Kirley, B. B. (April 01, 2010). The effects of minimum legal

drinking age 21 laws on alcohol-related driving in the United States. Journal of Safety

Research, 41, 2, 173-181.

Price, Tom. "Alcohol Abuse: Can Underage Drinking Be Curbed?" (2012): 501-23. CQ

Researcher Online [CQ Press]. Web. 31 Jan. 2017.