… The legal needs to be lowered to fit the remainder of the country’s standards of adulthood. Eighteen year olds have the maturity to look at alcohol as a social activity to interact with peers and adults and not as a way to alter their conscience. In addition, people fresh out of high school are bombarded by many financial institutions such as Wells Fargo and Bank of America. These companies are offering them Visa and Master Cards with up to 25% annual percentage rates (APR). How is someone with no credit history and little or no income supposed to take such huge financial responsibilities? They are expected to be able to take on this burden, yet they still can not buy a six pack to get their mind off the fact that they are in serious debt with their new credit card.
Most twenty-one year olds that own credit cards want to get drunk when they realize that they have such enormous financial burdens, when eighteen-year-olds don’t even have this option. An eighteen-year-old can die for his country while leaving his family to pay the 25% APR accrued by his quickly accumulated short-lived large debt. Yet he still couldn’t drink. The drinking age must be lowered because in the majority of foreign countries, there is no distinction between a right and a wrong age to drink. For instance, Amsterdam has no drinking age, but there are barely any injuries that relate to alcohol by people under the age of 21.
This is because all the young teenagers know that they can drink and this leaves nothing to rebel against, there is no hype. If something isn’t prohibited, it becomes something of less interest. Professor Craig Reiner man of University California Santa Cruz has devoted his life to studying alcohol and drug policies in different countries. He has found that when no boundaries are placed on the use of alcohol, it becomes part of the normal way of life and there is no final destination to reach if there is no age limit. In addition, Mexico’s drinking age is lower than Americas, which increases the rate of accidents involving alcohol. The rate of alcohol related accidents would decrease if the age limit were the same as Mexico’s because there would be no need for teens to travel to Mexico to get drunk.
Each year many teens from America travel to Mexico to take advantage of the young drinking age. In the act of doing this, horrible things take place, especially rapes and kidnappings of young girls. Going to Mexico and drinking is much more dangerous for an eighteen year old, than drinking in America for numerous reasons. Most importantly though, Spanish is the main language that is spoken there and if a teen is drunk and crosses paths with a policeman, he will go to jail. This is a very scary thought to think, because it could separate and worry schoolmates of the whereabouts of their friend. Changing the legal drinking age in America would solve all these problems, because the curiosity and hype would decrease dramatically.
Life hits a peek of change at the age of eighteen. There are responsibilities flying from all directions. These responsibilities are all characteristics of adulthood, but alcohol is considered a mid-adulthood only characteristic. There are a lot of responsible 19-year-olds, and there are plenty of irresponsible 22-year-olds.
In a land built on individual freedom, it is strange that we are sent out in the world as adults, yet denied the opportunity to make such a simple choice (Griffioen 2). The focus must be on family. There need to be open lines of communication between parents and their children about drinking (Griffioen 1). The taxes on alcohol should be stipend to the point where it simply isn’t economical to get wasted.
There need to be places where young adults can meet safely and be supervised. We need to get kids with kegs out of dirty basements and underage adults off tailgates in the middle of some farmer’s field with tall cans of Bud. Finally, the punishment for driving under the influence must be increased and always enforced. In Europe, drunken driving is simply not tolerated.
Too many lives are lost because of irresponsibility and a lenient justice system. In 1992 the average age of a person pulled over for driving under the influence was 39. 7 years old. Studies have shown that young people fear driving drunk more than adults.
It is still a tragic problem, but the United States must acknowledge that enforcing responsibility is more effective than criminalizing something that kids do anyway (Griffioen 2). I agree that before any measures are taken to change the current alcohol-related policies regarding age and college campuses, more education and awareness is needed. ‘Without addressing the problem and not ignoring it, their will always be abuse of alcohol (smith 2). Drunk driving is by far the most pervasive problem related to alcohol (CERA 1).
However, instead of dealing with the problem current laws simply circumvent it, and send the wrong message. Current drunken driving laws are a sham. Too often a defendant gets off with only nominal punishment or with no punishment at all. Losing the right to drive for six months is not enough a punishment, especially since many offenders continue to drive illegally.
Drunk driving is too likely to kill another person, and needs to be treated with this in mind. Instead of having laws that are tough on drinking and driving, we have laws that are tough on ‘under age’ drinking. The problem of drinking and driving has been swept under the table; instead we are keeping a small portion of our adult population from being allowed to drink. By lowering the drinking age, and raising the minimum penalties for DW Is we would be taken a very mature step. We would admit that we have ‘solved’ a problem only by glossing over it. We would finally make a step in the right direction of having a law that is actually aimed at the overall problem, not just what is politically expedient.
It a restriction of freedom to trust and expect so much out of a young adolescence and not let them participate in the activity of drinking. For the most part I think lowering the drinking age will have various benefits to this country, which will not only help us succeed economically but politically as well. Drinking is a part of our society. It has been since the beginning of civilization. Why deprive a section of our society from joining in? This makes no sense at all. More importantly why aren’t we protesting? Protesting worked before and it can work again.
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Pp 1-9. Available: web Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Chapter 3, Section 5-“The costs of illegal drug use.” In: Drugs, crime, and the Criminal Justice System. NCJ-133652, 126-127.
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