Drinking age- .
What should the age be for everyone to drink? This here is a common question all over the United States amoung teens and adults. Many feel that different ages should be the standard. Some feel that the current age is acceptable. While the age is now standing at 21 years old many minors are still drinking away at parties without there parents knowing. They are drinking at alarming rates, and often abuse it. This needs a solution more then just a general age for purchase.
Morels and responsibility are the main way to steer away from the abuse and neglect of alcohol. In the United States. when someone reaches the golden age 18, they are legally an adult. At 18 they can drive, buy the license to marry, they can now vote, pay taxes, and take out loans whenever they need the little extra money in their hands. But, even though they have all them legally rights now that they are now the big 18, they still cannot purchase or drink alcohol. There are still three more years for them until drinking alcohol is legal for them.
Many feel that this is why the drinking age should be lowered in the United States. Taking a different standpoint on this issue, the legalized drinking age should be lowerd to allow young adults starting at 18 to drink under the supervision ” in controlled environments such as restaurants, taverns,pubs, and offical school and university functions”. Supervised, moderate exposure to alcohol in the home with family lays foundation for a healthy respect for alcohol and it’s associated responsibilities. Responable drinking, in these situations, can be taught through the educational programs or by their peers. That would develop more mature and rational drinking behavior.
More than 37% of underage people are heavy drinkers. Only 30% of adults are heavy drinkers. If the underage drinkers were taught the right way to drink, instead of binge drinking, correcting our existing problem of abusive drinking would become much easier. The age law segregates our youth, while it is intended to protect society. Regrettably, it has backfired.
Drinking age laws does a decent job of keeping young people from purchasing alcohol in most cases, but that does not stop them from being apart of events and parties dealing with the influence of alcohol. If considered an adult and expected to act like one at age 18 is it right to restrict them to a drinking age of 21? Who ever says that 21 is the age that everybody is one intelligent and mature adult to consume alcohol’surely enough some adults abuse alcohol and some teenagers would be perfectly able to drink responibly. While 21 may be the legal drinking age in the U. S.
, but no one really has evidence existing thats proving that this is the age at which young people can safely begin drinking alcohol. On the contrary, 16-25 years old have more drink-drive related accidents than any other age in the whole country. Althought DUI numbers may or may not change if the drinking age was lowered, the DUI numbers would rise a lot but quickly. Lowering the drinking age would take away some of the temptation.
It’s not as much fun when it’s allowed! The most common reason for underage drinking is because alcohol is seen as ” the forbidden fruit” or “a badge of rebellion against authourity” and a symbol of adulthood”. A study by Dr. Ruth Engs, professor of applied health and science, found that by increasing the legal age, young people tend to abuse alcohol more. In actuality, to raise the drinking age was much more worse than doing nothing.
Drinking is more exciting when it is illegal, along with many bad habits. Many people go out and binge drink simply because they know they should no be drinking at all with them being underage. I’m sure they all know better to wait to be 21 before drinking under the influence. Leaving prohibitions on alcohol mostly to the family is the best tactic, if the aim is to decrease binge and drinking minors.
The focus should be on the safe consumptions instead of age restrictions. Other countries like Spain, Fance, and Portugal have a much lower rate of alcohol misuse. This comes from educated and gradual drinking. many people who have lived in Europe feel that people were drinking more responsibily in groups, rather than with a few friends getting passed out drunk.
American teens have not yet learned to drink gradually or in moderation. We need to focus on the most important thing of all is educating all our young people that wanna drink about the safety of drinking and as a social activity, instead a type of liberation. Why is there still a problem if education in alcohol currently exists? That’s easy, current education in high school and college about the influence of alcohol is set up like this:Here is how you drink responibly, now don’t you do this because you are too young. How does anyone expect people to listen to education like this? ” Here this is how you drink responsibly” they need to show the young teens car wrecks, any type of accidents that has happened while being under the influence, then maybe that will reach out to all them young adults easier and for the better. So, educate young adults, trust them. Treat the young adults like children and they will act like children.
Treat young adults as responsible adults they will act maturely. While most parents agree that serving alcohol to groups of minors should be forbidden, many parents also reserve the right to introduce their teenage kids to alcohol. ” We should allow drinking under supervision at an early age, because this teaches and develops more responsibile acts of drinking,” The main goal for us is , we must set as a society is to teach responsibility through peers and parents on the proper usage of alcohol. We must look past and just an age group and fix the abuse. While lowering and teaching values may help it’s unknown, what will inevitably happen if we do. It will take society as a whole change the mindset we are in.
This will take many years to fix and may never be fixed completely. There always seems to be more problems then solutions.
