Talycia Williams
Group Blog Assignment
Comp II. Brian Lewis
Well this is a question that I think deserves answering. Multiple people and doctors will say no ther are no pros to lowering the drinking age. They will even tell you there are adequate cons to lowering it. I am not saying that the info they are giving you is incorrect, I am simple giving you some more information and you make the decision. To start off one pro just thinkng off the top of my head one pro is sending less young adults to jail because of underage drinking. I know some of you will say "well why would we change a law just to keep them out of jail, if we did wouldn't that just gives grounds to other criminals to fight for laws to be overturned to fuel their crime?" This question is logical, but lets really look at what this question intales. Are we saying that our young adults who may be participating in underage drinking deserve the same treatment as citizens who commit higher scale crime? another question that I want to ask is, " is this issue as big as we are making it?" to answer my own question I dont think so. The United States of America is the only country that prohibits all alcoholic drinking under the age of 21. There are two other countries Pakistan and Norway that require certain strenghs of alcoholic beverages to be purchased by somone 21 or older but even in these countries most drinks are able to be consumed by ages 18 or older. ("Minimum Age Limits Worldwide" http://www.icap.org/) Countries Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, Thailand, and United Kingdom all have heir legal drinking age at 18. Are we stuck in an imaginary world were we really believe that hey are going to follow these rules? Are we driving them to underground and binge drinking?
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I will agree with you that it is possible given the drinking age being lowered that there could be less adolescents being sent to prison. However, I feel that we need to consider what they are doing to land themselves in prison in the first place. Do you think that an underage drinker would be put in prison if they haven’t deserved their punishment? And what does it take to deserve said punishment? If someone is drinking who is legally not supposed to and gets a minor, no, they probably don’t need to end up in prison. But if this same person who is underage goes to a party and drinks then drives their car home and hits someone, then yes, maybe they do deserve to it. To what extent would someone have to be drinking, have to be partying, and have to be endangering themselves and others before they deserve adequate punishment? If someone is breaking the law enough that officials see fit to arrest them, aren’t those the kinds of people that we want behind steel bars?
ReplyDeleteTo answer your next question, “do we live in an imaginary world?” No, we live in a realistic one. We have certain laws to keep the public safe, to have order. And with being 18 years old, being a legal adult, comes certain responsibility to respect those laws. Of course not everyone really believes that they will follow the rules and obey the laws, but it can and should be expected of them.
Does setting the drinking age to 21 really work? Does it prevent underage drinking, or does it cause more reckless drinking? It’s like that child that you shelter from the world their whole lives then once they’re of age, grown up( which also happens to be 18), they try and find themselves and get into everything because they were not properly exposed and informed of all their opportunities, and cautioned of possible bad things. Then there is the child in a perfectly normal family that when that child becomes a grown up (age 18), this child is exposed to things of life monitored by parents and loved ones and is taught how to experience these new things that have become available to them, because they are taught and more than likely everyone around them is not drunk (in this case) then they will be prone not to get drunk as well. Of course this scenario is not a guarantee nothing is guaranteed, but I think it is worth a try. At the age of 18 we give these people the liberty to choose to get married, to choose to go to war for our country, to choose to have sex if they want, and choose to vote or even run for office. Why not the choice to have a drink? A study called “Does 21 saves lives?” done by a professor at Harvard University and a law student at Yale University, show that there has been a 4% increase in drinking participation rates in high school kids since this law has been in place, this just the reported percentage most kids will not tell or even get help because of fear of getting in trouble. Then a 3% increase in episodic drinking for these “underage” kids. I am not saying the way they are drinking is correct and okay but I do believe that if they could learn how to drink socially and responsibly that this would not be as big of an issue that it is. I think that under the age of 18 young adults should not be allowed to drink; they have very few big people rights. But once they are grown, the age of 18 in this country, then with the other rights should come the drinking right. With that said according to these studies with solely underage drinking it has gotten worse because now they are sneaking, and drinking too much (binge drinking.) With all the information I have collected on whether it has been effective or not I have come out with the conclusion that it has not been effective. They (lawmakers) have gotten the opposite of their desired outcome. We can make it a healthier activity for these young adults because drinking under the age of 21 is not going to go away.
ReplyDeleteWorks Cited
Sullum, Jacob. “Does 21 Save Lives?” Reason; Nov2007, Vol. 39 Issue 6, p9-10, 2p
Points of View Reference Center. Web 08 February 2010.
“Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984.”www.alcoholpolicy.niaaa.nih.gov. web 08 February 2010.