Why the Drinking Age Should Not Be Lowered Essay Example

for twenty-nine states. After a short time the bill was quickly overturned due to the amount of car accidents that were fatal. 1) According to the National Highway traffic Safety Administration the number of fatal car crashes were cut 20% after the bill was overturned and the drinking age was restored once again to twenty-one.

Since 1975 is has been estimated that 19,121 lives have been saved from increasing the age back to twenty-one another very staggering statistic is that when the state of Vermont raised their drinking age back to twenty-one after the bill had been reverted they also reported fatal traffic accidents dropped by 40%.Even though the legal drinking age is now twenty-one the leading cause of death of teens is still fatal car crashes while the driver is intoxicated.  There is more to lowering the drinking age then just having the government pass a bill into changing the law. What many people don’t know is that the drinking age is governed on a state-by-state rule, for example any one state is capable of changing the law by simply going through the governor, although in 1984 congress passed a law for making it nearly insensible for any state to lower the drinking age.

The bill that is still in affect today cuts federal funding for highways by ten percent. Ten percent would be a devastating blow for any state in terms of tourism travel and money coming in from different states.  When a teen legally turns into an adult during their eighteenth birthday most of the teens in American still live with their parents and still fill the role of a child in the family

unit. By not having the maturity and experiences of living their life out on their own and facing real consequences, it would seem to make the ability of foresight impossible with the alcohol due to lack of real life experience. Teens are able to get their driver's license in most of the United States when they reach the age of sixteen, according to the Department of Motor Vehicles, it takes a new driver five years of experience to reach the skill of an average driver.

If the drinking age was lowered and an eighteen-year-old decided to drive while only having a few drinks, it would still increase the chances of an accident due to the fact that they are still a novice at operating a motor vehicle, increasing accidents and deaths due to the inability to judge what is to much and what is not.The most dangerous reason why the drinking law would cause problems would become the readily amount of alcohol available for the consumption of the high school teenagers. When most freshmen enter high school they are at the age of fifteen and being at parties with seniors who would be eighteen at the time, they would surely have the chance to start drinking alcohol and studies have proven that children that drink at a younger age have a better chance to binge drink at a younger age and develop alcoholism that may severely hinder the rest of their lives if they did not receive help. Lowering the drinking age could improve the economy by giving in influx to alcohol sales but at the cost of lives. It has only been forty years since

the drinking age was lowered and the results were evident then, and they should still be clear to us now.

The quote “History repeats itself” should be implied in this situation. With cars being made to go faster and able to be purchased by many teens today the roads are just as dangerous if not worse. Before the bill is passed, all the pros and cons should be considered and take into account what is best for the whole of the nation and not just colleges, and realize how far the effect will reach down into the youth of the nation.

References

1.  Weighing the Pros and Cons of Lowering the Legal Drinking Age. " Drug Rehab Treatment. 8 Oct 2008 <http://www.drugrehabtreatment. com/legal-drinking-age. html>.
2.  Foster, Victoria. "Should We Lower the Drinking Age? " 8 Oct 2008 <http://www.duianswer. com/library/should-we-lower-the-drinking-age. cfm>.