Lowering the Drinking Age to Eighteen Essays -- essays research papers

In 1984 Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole lobbied for all states to raise the legal drinking age from eighteen to twenty-one. The consequence for a state not raising the age was to lose a portion of their federal highway funding. I personally believe that the drinking age being twenty-one is just like when the voting age was twenty-one, if I can go to war and die for my country, then I should be able to go to the bar and buy a beer.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  One of the biggest problems in our society is under age drinking. They tell us how we aren’t allowed to drink, that we aren’t old enough or mature enough to do it, but the more adults talk about it, the more teenagers want to do it. When a kid goes off to college, it’s expected that he is going to drink. Since most kids don’t know what a hangover feels like, or what it’s like to get the spins, they don’t know their limits and when they need to stop. That is when you get people doing stupid things because they don’t know any better. The most important thing for a young drinker to know is his or her limit. Any eighteen year old can drink responsibly if they have a little bit of experience. Unfortunately most parents don’t want their kids to drink, so we have to learn the hard way without anyone there to tell us to slow down or to stop. For some kids that means getting sick one night and realizing that they shou ldn’t drink that much next time, but for some others the idea just never hits them, and they drink too much and that is when the trouble starts. Last Saturday night a friend of mine drank too much while she was out camping. She started to pass out and was puking all over herself. The more experienced kids in the group realized that she was in trouble and they rushed her back to campus where we were able to get her cleaned off and taken care of for the night.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Many people argue that when the drinking age was raised to twenty-one, that alcohol related deaths among people under twenty-one dropped from 43% to 21%. What they don’t tell you is that alcohol related deaths among people between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-five went up almost as much as the other group went down. Experience is the biggest tool in fighting the problems with underage drinking. The kid who goes to college without ever having gotten drunk is going to go all out at his or her first par... ...er curfews or can stay at a friend’s house. This next piece of information is based on my personal opinion and experiences. For a high school student, alcohol is very hard to get. Some kids get lucky and have older siblings or friends who will buy it for them. For almost everyone else at that age, alcohol is not a big part of their everyday life, and they turn to a much easier to get substance. Marijuana is one of the most commonly used drugs by high school students. It is a lot easier to get than alcohol, and for most kids it doesn’t seem as dangerous. You don’t wake up with a hangover, and you aren’t as impaired as you are when you are drunk. Most kids will drive when they are high and not even think twice about it. There are many reasons why the drinking age should be lowered to eighteen, and there are many reasons why it should stay twenty-one. There is proof that both sides of the argument work. In other countries without a drinking age or with a lowered one, you don’t hear about as many drunk driving accidents as you do in the United States. Maybe the drinking in the U.S. is just like the violence, as Michael Moore put it, what’s so different about us that makes it happen?