Why Should The Drinking Age Be 18

“There are fewer drunk driving traffic accidents and fatalities in many countries with a minimum drinking age of 18” (18 Interesting Pro…). So why does the United States keep the age that you can have libations at 21? There has been a debate going on whether the drinking age should be 21 or 18. People have brought up statistics on the amount of wrecks and the amount of money going back into the economy. So the United States needs to change the drinking age, the drinking age should be 18 because a person is legally an adult at 18, there’s less risky behaviors, and it would boost the US economy. The drinking age needs to be lowered because there are people dying for the US that can’t even drink in the United States. Look at him go he is now
out of school on his own and making decisions for himself. Think about it 18 is a big milestone in a person’s life. A kid is legally an adult at age 18. Now a person can do different tasks without a parent’s permission. ”In the United States, at 18 a person can join the Army, sign a contract, rent an apartment, get married, and undertake numerous other fun activities like pay bills (Andersen). Why not make the legal drinking age 18 so that all the rights happen all at once? The United States has 18 year olds that are joining the military and fighting for the United States and potentially dying. If the biggest worry a person has, over lowering the drinking age is that drinking the alcohol will effect a person medically or even kill them then shouldn’t the age that you can enlist be 21, because enlisting and fighting for the United States is just as dangerous as drinking a beer but a person has to have so much more mettle to fight for the United States. “More than 90% of all alcohol consumed by underage drinkers is consumed during binge drinking” (Andersen). When a person goes to college they are not used to alcohol. If the drinking age is lowered to 18 then the “adult” will have the chance to learn how to responsibly drink alcohol before they leave the watchful eyes of their parents and are on their own making decisions. Cause one bad decision could lead to a bacchanalian weekend full of copious amounts of drinking where someone can get into a lot of trouble. One big thing that happens when a kid first goes to college, being a Freshman, most of them make friends with the upperclassmen so that they have friends that are 21 that can get them alcohol legally because most of their friends coerce them to drink illegally. Those Freshman then start to sneak around because they are drinking alcohol illegally. Then it leads to those freshman buying fake IDs. Then that’s when the police force needs to come in when all of this could have been avoided had the drinking age been 18. Here’s one thing to think about when the United States first changed the drinking age from 18 to 21, it didn’t reduce the amount of drinking it just drove the copious underage drinking cases underground and that’s more dangerous because on their own kids don’t know what moderation is that’s why parents need to be there to teach them that. As the drinking age lowers the economy goes up with the new libation sales.
One big place that the economy really gets a boost from is though tourism. A lot of younger adults travel right after high school and right before college. If there is a young adult that wants to travel away from their country and is thinking about coming to the United States one turn off is the drinking age being 21. Younger adults like to go to countries that have a lower drinking age or even countries that don't even have a drinking age because it is enticing. They know that drinking there is not taboo. Seth Hurtwitz is a guy who has traveled the world and when he was in countries that had no drinking age he noticed that some of the kids that weren’t drinking weren’t drinking because of the drinking age but because they didn’t want to. “kids are going to drink if they want to drink” (Hurtwitz). That is a big heresy that most United States citizens have. If the United States changes the drinking age to 18 doesn’t mean that every 18 year old is going to start drinking and get drunk all of the time. There is going to be some of the docile 18 year olds that just won’t drink because they don’t want to, drinking isn’t insipid but the difference is that they get a choice on what they want to do and how they want to live their
life. Many have dogmatic beliefs that drinking before age 21 is medically unsafe for teens. A person’s brain does not conclude developing until their mid-twenties. When kids drink alcohol before their brain is finished developing it effects the lobe of their brain that is in charge of decision making. That’s why as a result adults tend to get alcoholism at an earlier age. However alcoholism only appears in a minority of people. It won’t matter how much a person drinks, if that person is an alcoholic they will become addicted even if they drink very little. This is a disease that can not be avoided if it affects a person just right. Another reason that some people still claim for why the drinking age should stay 21 is with car crashes. They say that most drunk driving accidents happen with 16-20 year olds driving the vehicles. The big fact they use was once the drinking age went up to 21 the percent of fatalities caused by drunk driving went from 61% to 31%. However the thing people need to remember is that didn’t stop teens from drinking, it made it more appeasing. Because if someone tells a teen not to do something, we all know that, that makes them want to do it even more, and that totally defeats having the drinking age at 21. Take a long look at the benefits that would come from lowering the drinking age back to 18. Not only are there the personal benefits but also the economic benefits and the benefits to the society. Should we really be depriving the youth of the United States of one of their rights. The right to drink alcohol legally.