Should the Legal Drinking Age Be Lowered?

"This law has been an abysmal failure. It hasn't reduced or eliminated drinking. It has simply driven it underground, behind closed doors, into the most risky and least manageable of settings,"(Debate) said John McCardell of “Choose Responsibility”. Choose Responsibility is a non-profit organization that is for lowering the drinking age to 18. Young adults can vote, fight and die for their country overseas, and purchase tobacco at age 18, but why cannot they have a beer? Drinking among the youth in the United States has escalated to dangerous levels such as binge drinking, reckless parties, and even death. The average age when kids take their first sip of alcohol is a staggering 14 years of age (Debate). The legal drinking age of twenty-one is not working. The government needs a solution to fix this problem before it continues to get out of hand. Therefore, age should not determine when someone can or cannot drink. As well as, lowering the drinking age to 18 could fix the youths drinking habits and dangerous alcoholic environments they face today. The national drinking age was changed from 18 to 21 in 1984 (Bender). Many people thought that this age would save lives and reduce the amount of kids drinking, but those who thought that were wrong. A majority of college students consume alcohol, almost all of which are underage. Being surrounded by parties, booze, and peer pressure influences college students under the age of 21 to consume alcohol. Easy access to alcohol from their peers gives the underage drinkers a chance to consume as much alcohol as they want in one night. Those under 21 are the heaviest drinkers, which have 5 or more drinks in one night which then leads to a massive problem with our alcohol consuming youth today: binge drinking (Kiesbye). More than ninety percent of alcohol consumed by minors is done

while drinking heavily, or what experts call binge drinking (Pro and con 4). Binge drinking is the main reason why most scientist and experts

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