Lower the U.S. Drinking Age

2-27-12

I. Introduction: • All around the world many people drink alcohol for many different Occasions. There are drinks at parties, bars, clubs and even your home. You can find alcohol just about everywhere in the United States. Around the world there are many different age requirements in order to drink or buy alcohol. The majority of countries around the world have a set age minimum of eighteen years of age. So why is our drinking age 21? • Why is this important to us? We are all college students and everybody knows that there is underage drinking one way or another. • Professor Ruth C. Engs from Indiana University states “The legal drinking age should be lowered to about 18 or 19 and young adults allowed to drink in controlled environments such as restaurants, taverns, pubs and official school and university functions.” • I believe that the legal drinking age in the United States should be lowered to the ages of 18 or 19. The reason it should be lowered is because college students will drink at least once during their first year of college. Legally, at the age of eighteen we are granted the rights of adults. And finally, by forbidding teens to not drink that forces them to drink in unsafe places.
II. College students drink! • College students will always drink! According to alcohol101.com 72% of all college students drink alcohol. 69% of the total 72% are underage drinkers. • If the legal drinking age was lowered to 18 then drinking in college will not be as big as it is now. It would still occur but not as much as it does now. • By lowering the drinking age, college students will be able to drink in safer places such as bars or clubs, instead of house parties or other places. Now that I’ve talked about college students drinking I will now move onto how at the age of 18 the U.S. calls us “adults”.
III. Considered “adults” • At the age of 18 in the United States we are considered “adults” and obtain all the rights and responsibilities of being adults. At this age we can now vote, sign up for the armed forces, and buy cigarettes. However we cannot buy or consume alcohol legally until 3 years later. • If we are already considered as adults at the age of 18 then why can we not lower the drinking age? Now that I have talked about being adults but not being able to buy alcohol at the age of 18, I’m going to talk about now how drinking at unsafe environments is harmful.
IV. Unsafe Drinking Environments • Because the legal drinking age is 21, that forces college students, mainly freshman, to drink at house parties where they do not know what they are drinking at times. • Drinking at house parties seems fun, however it could go bad in many ways. Since freshman cannot buy alcohol they resort to free alcohol at parties, which could be very dangerous because they will be unaware of any thing that could be put inside their drink. • Setting the drinking age to 18 would allow these college students to purchase their own drinks and they will for sure know what they bought and it would be closed therefore letting them know it is safe to consume. V. Conclusion • To recap on my speech; the drinking age should be lowered to the age of 18 in the United States. Not only is that the most popular age to drink around the world it is a very reasonable age. By changing the drinking age to 18 then we can really be considered as adults and will be responsible for our own actions.