The 21 Drinking Age

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In America, the law is extremely strict with the policy of being 21 or older to have the right to drink. I feel that age is not very necessary when it comes to limitations on drinking. The drinking age should be lowered to a younger age if not lifted all together. I believe that a positive results will come from the drinking age being dropped. In this paper I am going to defend why there should not be a drinking age, because I believe that it is essential to help solve the underage drinking problems we have in our nation.

My argument is as follows: There a few different reasons why the drinking age should be dropped and why it would help the problem of alcohol abuse in younger people in America. Most of Europe has no drinking age and does not have the same types of problems that underage Americans do with alcohol. When limitations are set on adolescents and young adults they tend to rebel against rules and abuse the limitation that is set on them. Finally, there is a sense of rights that comes into play with this issue, at the age of 18 a person is considered to be an adult and is given many different responsibilities (basic ones being: charged as an adult and going to war for this country.) with that, the privilege to drink should naturally be another responsibility.

Europe has virtually no drinking age and does have the same types of problems that underage Americans do with alcohol. To Europeans drinking is just another part of life and it is

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not looked at as a problem among young people. There is no where near the number of problems with alcohol abuse in European=s compared to the youth of America. I am going to take Finland as an example to compare to the United States. It is stated that this past year in Finland there was only about 3000 fins killed a year from alcohol. Now that may seem like a big number of deaths but compared to the United States it is actually nothing. The United States accounted for 17, 448 alcohol related deaths this past year which is close to six times the amount of the amount of deaths in Finland. This just goes to show that massive difference between alcohol abuse between America and Europe is. What I am proposing is that the United States should look at these figures and realize that it is not a coincidence that the figures are so far apart. The only major difference between the U.S. and Finland or other European Countries is the drinking age. Of all the major country in the world the United States is the only place that imposes a drinking age of 21. The majority of countries in the world have the legal age set at 18. I believe that if not taken fully away that the drinking age should at least be dropped to 18. The facts don=t lie and you can obviously see that because of a lowered drinking age less deaths would occur and it would be very beneficial to our countries health.

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My second premiss is that when limitations are set on adolescents and young adults they tend to rebel against rules and abuse the limitation that is set on them. Underage kids are going to drink no matter what. Whether they smuggle beer into a dorm room or all gather at an open house there is going to be drinking and because it is so shunned upon they are going to abuse it. Statistically speaking people of age do not abuse drinking anywhere near the amount that underage people do. If the drinking age is lowered there will be nothing for people to feel that they have to rebel against authority and in reality there will be nothing but positive results. In a recent interview I read about the lowering of the drinking age a Doctor named Dr. Engs stated that more younger people tend to drink abusively when they do consume and this change occurred after the increase in the drinking age.. This is because underage people look at the drinking age as a privilege that is taken away from them and so when they are able to take advantage of that privilege they do and sometimes the results are deadly. I strongly feel that younger people abuse alcohol so drastically because they know that it is forbidden and they get a sense of rebellion from drinking so much. If the drinking age is dropped there would be nothing for younger people to rebel against and binge drinking and the horror that comes with that would

be not as drastic.

-4-My final Premiss is that it is unjust to limit a person under 21 from the simple act of having a drink even though they are given far more important responsibilities. At the