length: 2613 words 7.5 double spaced pages there has been an ongoing controversy in the united states on whether the drinking age should be lowered to eighteen like most of the world or if it should stay at twenty one. Underage drinking has been a major controversial issue for years, yet why is it not under control? teenagers are continuing to buy alcohol with fake identification cards, drink, get into bars, and drink illegally. As a teen i have proof that these things are going on not only in college but in high school as well. There are a lot of factors that come together to why the drinking age should be lowered to eighteen the most obvious reason is too many people are drinking before they are twenty one. Liquor stores, bars, and clubs all want to make money and if they can get away with selling to underage teens then they will. By now it is obvious that the law has not succeeded in preventing the under 21 group from drinking? michael smith 1. The amount of binge drinking would lessen, and the out rage to drink would also decrease.

In 1992, researchers reported that more college?s students were drinking to get drunk than their counterparts a decade earlier, and one recent study reported an increase, just since 1994, in the number of students who drink deliberately to get drunk? smith 1. I interviewed my friend shelly mitchell who recently turned twenty one and asked her how she felt about finally being legal to drink. It is not as exciting to drink anymore, i mean i still like to go out with my friends to bars, but the fun is all over, in high school and college it was so exciting trying to get alcohol by using a fake id. In a study done by the harvard school of public health, binge drinking is defined as five drinks in a row for boys and four drinks for girls. And when they did a survey they found that 44% of the students attending harvard binge drink jeffrey kluger 1.

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Drinking alcohol can be a much closed subject in some people?s lives sometimes concerning religion, and others just blatantly breaking the law. In my opinion, improving education on the effects of drinking and having open discussions on alcohol would benefit everyone. Heath of brown university, recommends: teach safe drinking to your college bound teen? legal drinking age website. Either parents turn a blind eye to their child drinking, punish them, or understand and do what they can to cope with their child?s drinking. Drinking has the label of being ?bad? and that makes a lot of teens want to do it more. A more sensible approach would be to have open discussions and become more educated rather than being banned.

If the drinking age was eighteen, parents would be more understanding and may even offer to help with driving or be more thoughtful when their child calls drunk and can?t drive. I know from experience with friends often times they would insist on driving after they have been drinking, just because they knew they would be punished. It is known that the legal age is twenty one, yet most eighteen year olds feel as if they are already twenty one when they can go out and buy with their fake id or drink at a bar. Hanson, a sociologist who has studied drinking issues on college campuses extensively, argues that the emphasis should be less on stigmatizing alcohol and rather promoting responsible consumption of alcohol in an effort to minimize harm? icap reports website. In result of not being legal to consume alcohol, teenagers are being forced to be secretive and sometimes make things very dangerous. I know from experience a fellow class mate of mine threw his graduation party in the mountains where the road to get up to the spot was curvy and steep. The rule was everyone who went had to camp out, but some people always get away with leaving drunk.

The drinking age of twenty one has driven student partying to less public, and thus more dangerous, venues. With less oversight from adults, heavy drinking, brawling, and sexual misconduct are more likely to occur? smith 2. The environment in which one drinks in is very important, and being under twenty one we are forced to do it in secretive places, most people hiding from the police, and or other members of authority. I would rather have them drinking in a setting where somebody?s checked an id at an establishment, instead of an unsupervised situation where two hundred kids will crowd into a basement of a house, turn off the lights and drink themselves sick? rally website. Kids will find a way to get away with it, but getting caught is not something they want to happen. The first thing that comes to a teenagers mind when their parents go out of town is.

In high school people would go around with cups and collect money for the party keg that weekend. Authority officials would see this and the child would just be told to put it away. The drinking age is arbitrary, why twenty one and not nineteen or twenty or even twenty five, why does twenty one make you more responsible? michael smith?s article is titled.

They can vote for the president, fire a rifle for the military, buy and sell real estate, and raise families of their own. I happen to agree with smith and everything he says in that quote, it makes no sense at all to be treated as an adult in some instances and others not. Teenagers are being forced to get alcohol using illegal identification or making someone twenty one years or older to get it for them. I believe that all rights of adults should be extended to persons reaching this age. This includes the ability to choose whether or not one wishes to buy and consume alcoholic beverages.

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The government trusts us to vote for who rules our county and fight for our country, why can they not treat us like full adults for another three years petition website. As a british citizen i have been brought up with completely different ideas about drinking. It has always been a social aspect of my life until we moved to the states in 1993. Even though i was only eight when i moved here, we go back twice year and i can?t believe how different it is. In england it is legal to go to the pub bar with your parents at the age of fifteen and order a drink and eighteen when you are alone. The united sates is one out of five countries where the drinking age is twenty one.

Nineteen countries have a minimum drinking age of eighteen and two have a minimum of sixteen, and one which is japan has the age set at twenty icap reports website. This encourages responsible drinking as done with parents in a civilized environment. Fewer stigmas in england are associated with drinking as teenagers are allowed by parents to drink responsibly at home. Interviewing my father, ian brownlow, who spent his teenage years in england, looks at drinking more as a social aspect of life, not as a large harmful issue as the united states does. Yes, in conjunction with promoting greater education about drinking and higher penalties for dwi offences.

I also asked him how his teenage years differed from ours, because he was legal to drink. There was no binge drinking and for the most part drinking was done in a responsible manner. In america today, the negative reaction to drinking by teens promotes binge drinking or drinking under peer pressure to be cool. When teenagers are motivated to get something they want, most times they will get it.

Walking around the cafeteria i eat dinner at each evening i decided to take a poll on my fellow classmates who are also eighteens years of age. I went around to thirty different students asking them how many times a week they drank and how they got their hands on the liquor. Out of the thirty randomly picked students not one student said they didn?t drink and more than half admitted they drink three times a week or more. Also only four out of the thirty said they get their liquor through someone who is truly twenty one, the other twenty six either have a fake identification card or one of their friends have one. This proves the point that liquor stores are most definitely selling to underage teens.

The teens that i talked to are not just having one or two drinks when they go out, they are drinking excessive amounts three times a week or more. In a survey done though the media by anne wagner in june of 2001, out of nine hundred nineteen year olds, eighty percent admitted to underage drinking. Another survey was taken over every age category seeing how many people started drinking before they were actually legal.

Between ages eighteen to thirty four there were eighty percent, ages thirty five to fifty there were sixty nine percent, ages fifty one to fifty nine there were sixty five percent, ages sixty to sixty nine there were forty nine percent, and seventy and older there were thirty seven percent. The twenty one year drinking age has not reduced drinking on campuses, it has probably increased it. Society expects us to graduate students who have been educated to drink responsibly.