Joe Lomauro
English 2010 Arygle
Report
ID
Young people are introduced to alcoholic beverages in various ways depending
on the cultural settings. Parents, siblings or peers introduce some. In the majority of
countries, once at the age at which other adult rights and responsibilities are handed to a
person so are the rights to purchase and publicly consume alcohol legally. What is not
clear or consistent is the age at which this should occur. We recognize the risk for alcohol
to be abused, especially by inexperienced high school and college students. The
imposition of a legal drinking age limits one aspect of a society's desire to reduce the
potential for harms associated with inappropriate drinking patterns. Young adults who are
under 21 do drink. Every day, young adults armed with fake IDs and friends who are of
legal age go out to impair their worries away while at the same time attempting to avoid
charges such as minor in possession, DUI and minor intoxications. Hardened
punishments and regulations seem to have little effect on the number of young adults who
are willing to risk legal consequences for having a drink. The government can help ease
the endless struggle between students and University officials by lowering the drinking
age to 18.
At the age of 18, one must enroll to Selective Service. Meaning that one must tell
the government that they are an adult now and they can fight for the country they reside
in, if needed. I can go die for my country at the young age of 18; I should be able to have
a drink when I want to. Some 18-20 year olds marry, have children, own cars, homes,
firearms, and are financially and socially independent. Yet they are legally prohibited
from drinking a beer while out to dinner or a glass of wine at their own wedding. In 1984,
Congress enacted the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which required states to
enforce a drinking age of 21 or risk losing 10% of federal highway funds. (Carpenter)
The act was originally established to prevent inexperienced drivers from crossing state
lines to drink legally and driving back drunk to their home states. Most university
students do not have cars on campus and those that do are often over the legal drinking
age. Drunken driving laws that did not exist in 1984 proved to be successful deterrents. A
majority of students do not reach the legal drinking age during college until their junior
or senior year. From personal experience and according to The NSDUH Report can
confirm that more drinking is done in the first years of college compared to the
progressing years. I have been to many bars, liquor stores and parties where age did not
matter, you could drink. A lot of new responsibility comes with the first year in college.
Many students are caught off guard and not prepared for the part scene and peer pressure
when they go out drinking at a university. From classes to relationships to drinking, and
everything else in-between students decide the order in which to try them. Drinking often
becomes the first social pastime in which students engage. The rush of entering a college
bar for the first time with no supervision from mom or dad to witness the illegal activity
of underage drinking can give you a rush and a sense of independence, but it can also be
responsible for a ride in an ambulance later that night or the reason for a visit to the drunk
tank at the police station.
Lawmakers see those who are underage dying, getting sick or going to rehab from
the effects of alcohol and the solution in their eyes is to tighten up the system by
restricting the customers whom they can serve to a specific age group. That solution is
wrong, it has not worked and will not work. Laws will still be broken and people 20
years, 364 days and younger will continue to drink alcohol. The answer to the problem of
underage drinking is not to add more limits. The solution is to eliminate the "underage"
part. A study printed in the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education has found that the
lower drinking age has not really posed a problem for underage drinkers. This study also
found that only 1.5% of their survey sample of students agreed that the availability of
alcohol was presenting a problem for them and their drinking habits. Increasing the
drinking age has had little positive impact on the university population in regard to the
level of alcohol consumption.
The higher drinking age forces colleges and universities to spend unnecessary
money, drawn from grants, government funding, tuition money, and taxes, on an issue
that they never paid much attention to before. (Jones) Combating Underage-drinking
program is just one of the many programs set aside for this cause. This Federal program
gives each state $360,000 to put towards programs for the prevention of underage
drinking. (Jones) As a part of the18 to 20 age group and especially as college students,
we would like to be treated as adults since we technically are “adults” according to the
United States Constitution. A wave of moderate drinkers would emerge because it would
become a societal norm for adults to enter a bar and have a drink at their own discretion.
Those who are worried that a lower drinking age will lead to a greater number of
alcoholics, fabricate the assumptions that college students and their contemporaries are
not responsible enough to drink. Not only has that not been proven, but it is also intended
to scare the general public. The fear that a person of voting age cannot responsibly drink
has become more widespread among the baby boomer and older generations, but for no
apparent reason other than to impose a twisted sense of "morality" on a younger
generation to which they are subjected. (Seaman)
Adults will tell you that times have changed and that is why one cannot legally
drink at 18 anymore. But in the end college freshmen are college freshmen, whether they
enrolled in school in 1950 or 2012. They will participate in the same activities, do the
same things, study as much or as little and party as hard if not harder than those enrolled
before them. It is true that times are more complicated and strict, but when certain rights
are the norm, then tragedies such as fatalities from drinking and driving can be avoided.
Our society must not look to punish and restrict, but to promote and accept. Treating
legal adults like actual adults is the first step in the direction of reform.
Lowering the drinking age would be economical. If the present law were updated,
the Department Of Public Safety would no longer have to bother University students
across campus about underage drinking. Local liquor stores, restaurants and bars would
have less pressure to spot underage buyers using fake IDs. (Carpenter) Instead, the
University and the city could invest these currently wasted resources into more
productive efforts. A lot of money is wasted pursuing a war that cannot be won.
University authorities seem to have forgotten that students will illegally drink no matter
how many cops are running after them with tickets in their hands. Yet the same pointless
cycle repeats itself every weekend, every year and it will continue to repeat it.
Works Cited
Clare Elliott. "This House Would Lower The Drinking Age." idebate.org. 17 Feb 2012.
idebate.org, Web. 7 Jul 2014. http://idebate.org/debatabase/debates/health/house-wouldlower-drinking-age
Carpenter, Christopher, and Carlos Dobkin. 2011. "The Minimum Legal Drinking Age
and Public Health." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 25(2): 133-56.
Seaman, Barrett. Binge: What Your College Student Won't Tell You: Campus Life in an
Age of Disconnection and Excess. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2005. Print.
Henry Wechsler and Toben F. Nelson. Will Increasing Alcohol Availability By
Lowering the Minimum Legal Drinking Age Decrease Drinking and Related
Consequences Among Youths? American Journal of Public Health June 2010: Vol. 100,
No. 6, pp. 986-992.doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2009.178004
Jones, Sandra. "Continuing the Dialogue: Reducing Minimum Legal Drinking Age Laws
from 21 to 18 Read More:
Http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/10884602.2011.585724." 22.3 (n.d.): 13843. Web. 9 July 2014.
Office of Applied Studies. (2003). Results from the 2002 National Survey on Drug Use
and Health: National findings (DHHS Publication No. SMA 03-3836, NSDUH Series H22). Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administratio