Drinking+Laws

Eighteen is Just too Young

According to various studies, approximately 25,000 lives have been saved since states began adopting the 21-year-old drinking age in 1975, but now there has been a call to lower the drinking age back to eighteen. The argument is that if college students have access to alcohol at a younger age, then binge drinking on campuses will lower significantly. The drinking age should stay at twenty-one because eighteen year olds are not mature enough to handle alcohol mentally, physically, or in the long term. Also, eighteen year old students still attend high school and alcohol would be far too easy for underage teens to get a hold of it. Lastly, some argue that lowering the drinking age to eighteen will not solve the binge drinking problem because students have a misperception of college drinking life that will never fade. Lowering the drinking age could be a huge mistake for the youth and all of America.

In July of 2008, one hundred college presidents and chancellors went public with the Amethyst Initiative. The Amethyst Initiative is a call to rethink the minimum drinking age of twenty-one. They argue that the law encourages students to drink at parties and social occasions where alcohol is present because sociology says that Americans have a tendency to rebel against society. So the argument of the colleges is since the law says they can't drink, students will want to drink more as a miniature rebellion against "The Man". If the drinking age was lowered from twenty-one to eighteen, and students could drink at bars and restaurants, they might learn moderate drinking habits. If moderate drinking habits are learned binge drinking across campuses should start to disappear, and the problem of underage drinking on college campuses across America would be solved.

The Amethyst Initiative is right to draw attention to underage binge drinking because it is a huge problem in the United States. The Initiative wishes to change the Minimum Drinking Age Act set by congress in 1984. They argue that studies, by Richard A. Scribner, (M.D., M.P.H.), of the Louisiana State University School of Public Health, have shown that in places where there is less enforcement of underage drinking laws that lowering the drinking age to eighteen would actually lower binge drinking.( // Mental Health Weekly Digest // ) In other words, campuses that have a lot of bars or restaurants close by that don't check identification or campuses where underage students have easier access to alcohol, binge drinking is higher. If the drinking age on campus is lowered to eighteen then students will no longer binge because they will have developed good social drinking habits. The people who signed actually believe this solution will help keep college students safe.

The arguments against lowering the drinking age are very strong and clear. Eighteen year olds are way too immature mentally, physically, and in the long-term to be able to purchase and consume alcohol legally or illegally. Eighteen year old students are too young to make educated decisions under the influence of alcohol. The mental maturity of eighteen year olds are not developed enough to handle alcohol. A study done by "Mothers Against Drunk Driving" (MADD) showed that thirty out of the thirty-five European countries with eighteen year old minimum drinking age laws have a higher percentage of fatal accidents due to alcohol usage than America. "This is not about rights and responsibilities," Ms. Dean-Mooney, President of the MADD said. "It's about public health and safety."

At eighteen years old the human mind is still developing, and the mind keeps developing until age thirty. Alcohol has an extremely negative effect on the brain. It kills brain cells, impairs depth perception, effects decision making, and can lead to brain damage. Alcohol destroys brain cells and unlike many other types of cells in the body, brain cells do not regenerate. Excessive drinking over a prolonged period of time can cause serious problems with cognition and memory (bloodalcohol.info). Alcohol destroys the body, especially the liver, and can cause irreversible damage. The effects of alcohol, on your decision making mixed with the raging hormones teenagers are producing at eighteen, can lead to teens potentially harming, or even killing themselves or others around them while under the influence of alcohol.

At twenty-one years old most people are juniors or seniors in college, but at eighteen most people are either freshman in college or seniors in high school. If the drinking age gets lowered from twenty-one to eighteen, access to alcohol would be easier for high school students. Underage drinking would increase substantially if the high school population got involved. Unfortunately high school students are very easily persuaded by peer pressure. If high school students had access to alcohol then the amount of teenagers, ages fourteen to seventeen, that binge drink would increase rather than decrease. The age that kids receive their driving learner’s permit is fifteen, and the age you get a license is sixteen. Teenagers from ages fifteen to eighteen are very excited about being able to drive. By mixing the effects of alcohol with the carelessness and excitement of young new drivers the amount of accidents that would be caused by drinking and driving would increase exponentially.

Also high school students are very rebellious, about almost everything, especially the rules. So if the law says that they can't drink until they are eighteen, and they have easy access to alcohol, then they will drink. If the drinking age lowers to eighteen underage drinking will start to go up because eighteen year olds are too immature to handle the responsibilities of alcohol, and it will end up being distributed to underage drinkers to easily. Lastly, studies have shown that if bad drinking habits are developed at a young age, then those same habits can carry on into adulthood. After interviewing adults who struggle with alcohol abuse many of them said that their first drink was between the ages fifteen to seventeen. Lowering the drinking age from twenty-one to eighteen could lead to an increase in adults who struggle with alcohol abuse. Also the same adults who struggled with alcohol abuse had parents who also struggled with alcohol abuse. So if alcohol abuse and underage drinking are connected and underage drinking is connected to alcoholic parents, then there could be a never ending cycle of alcoholics if the drinking age is lowered to eighteen.

Although the argument for lowering the drinking age to eighteen is that binge drinking on college campuses across America will decrease. The same argument can be made on the opposite side of the spectrum as well. In the same study that showed binge drinking could decrease, due to lowering the drinking age, also showed that it could increase. The misperception most underage college students have is that during college alcohol is consumed all the time and in large amounts. "The higher the level of enforcement of underage drinking laws, the higher the level of misperception would have to be for the Amethyst Initiative to have any hope of being effective," explained lead researcher Dr. Jawaid W. Rasul, of BioMedware Corporation. "The misperception effect would have to be extremely large." “And without data supporting the existence of such high levels of student misperception,” Rasul said, “lowering the legal drinking age would be unlikely to stop college binge drinking.”

This means that the more that pressure there is on enforcing the underage drinking law, the more new students have to believe that college is about drinking and partying for lowering the drinking age to stop binge drinking. So the Amethyst Initiative is unlikely to work because the misperception or the enforcement will never be equaled out. This would not only cause a problem with underage drinkers on college campuses, but all currently underage drinkers would be affected. Past research has shown that when alcohol becomes more readily accessible to young people, alcohol related problems, such as binge drinking, go up. The amount of underage binge drinking would raise more than it would fall across American colleges as a whole if the minimum drinking age was lowered from twenty-one to eighteen.

As one of the most studied and debated public health laws in history, there's overwhelming evidence that the twenty-one law works, and that the law should stay the same. The amount of good that the twenty-one law has done for America cannot be measured or put into words because what it does is save lives. Lowering the drinking age from twenty-one to eighteen will cause damage to the youth of the country that, if the law were changed, would be detrimental to society and America’s future because the youth of America is the future and the twenty-one law protects them. To protect the future of the country the drinking age must stay at twenty-one.

Works Cited

 · "Age 18 isn't the answer." //USA Today// 27 Aug. 2008: 12A. //Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context//. Web. 17 Mar. 2011  []  · []

 · "Colleges and Binge Drinking." //New York Times// 17 Sept. 2008: A26(L). //Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context//. Web. 17 Mar. 2011.  []

 · "Colleges and Binge Drinking." //New York Times// 17 Sept. 2008: A26(L). //Gale Student Resources In Context//. Web. 17 Mar. 2011.  []

· "How Alcohol Affects Your Body." //bloodalcohol.info//. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Mar 2011. <• http://www.bloodalcohol.info >.

 · Khadaroo, Stacy Teicher. "Colleges take on drinking age." //Christian Science Monitor// 8 Sept. 2008: 2. //Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context//. Web. 18 Mar. 2011.  []

 · "Legal at 21; Leave it that way." //Washington Times// [Washington, DC] 2 Oct. 2008: A21. //Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context//. Web. 17 Mar. 2011.  []

 · "Lowering the drinking age is unlikely to curb college binge drinking." //Mental Health Weekly Digest// 27 Dec. 2010: 49. //Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context//. Web. 17 Mar. 2011.  []

 · "SADD resists lower drinking age." //Pittsburgh Tribune-Review// [Pittsburgh, PA] 22 Aug. 2008. //Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context//. Web. 18 Mar. 2011.  []