According to the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, in 2010 underage drinkers from ages 15-20 were responsible for 48.8% of alcohol purchases. The minimum legal drinking age(MLDA) in the United States was 18 years old until 1984, when all fifty states raised their legal drinking age to 21 or older. The drinking age should be lowered from 21 years old to 18 years old because at that age one legally becomes an adult, it would reduce the amount of unsafe drinking activity, and there are fewer drunk driving car accidents in many other countries with a drinking age of 18.
In the United States at the age of eighteen you receive the rights and responsibilities of adulthood. As an adult you should be able to make your own decisions on drinking alcohol. You can vote, smoke cigarettes, serve on juries, get married, sign contracts, be prosecuted as adults, and join the military. It is known that alcohol consumption can interfere with development of the young adult brain's …show more content…
In the United Kingdom, only 15.88% of car accidents are related to drunk driving. In stating this, you can’t really say that having a drinking age of 18 reduces the amount of drunk driving accidents. Plus, deaths from drunk driving as a percentage of total driving fatalities have gradually decreased since 1982, two years before MLDA 21 went into effect. Since this decline came across all age groups, it cannot be because of the introduction of MLDA 21. In a 2002 meta-study of the legal drinking age and health and social problems, 72% of the studies found no statistics that related to an increase in suicide and criminal activities by adolescents if the drinking age were to be lowered to eighteen. Raising the drinking age has been ineffective thus