Drinking age should stay at 21

Drinking age should 21

Teenagers will do just about anything to fit in with the "popular" crowd. Drinking and partying are both viewed as cool or popular in the eyes of some teenagers. What does a teenage party consist of? Well, it will usually take place in a house with no parental supervision, along with members of both sex, and a lot of alcohol. The teens may then engage in drinking games such as beer pong, flip cup, quarters, presidents and A-holes, to name a few. As time passes trouble begins. The girls may become more vulnerable to sexual activity than if they were sober. Some kids may become very sick and could possibly acquire alcohol poisoning. And to top it all off, others may get behind the wheel of a car and attempt to drive home. These are just a few of the problems that arise from underage drinking.

It is often argued by teens that the drinking age is too high. They believe that if they are eligible to vote, they may be sent to war, and possibly die for their country at the age of eighteen; then they should be able to consume alcohol. What some of these teens don't know is that the drinking age was eighteen at one time in some states. However, the United States government saw problems with youth drinking and they decided to raise the legal drinking age to twenty-one. As an additional incentive to enforce the age significance, the government proposed to stop all federal funding of highways to the states whose drinking age was less than twenty-one,.

During the 1960's and 70's many states lowered the legal drinking age from twenty-one to eighteen. In many of these states, documents showed a considerable increase in highway deaths of teens between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one. When the legal age was converted back to twenty-one, the states observed the number of alcohol related highway fatalities of the age group effected by the change and discovered that there was approximately a thirteen percent decrease in teenage fatalities. This clearly shows that there would be more traffic fatalities if the drinking age were to be lowered to eighteen.

Alcohol related car accidents are indeed the most observed problem when considering lowering the drinking age. This is not of any surprise, considering that car accidents pose the greatest threat to the lives of teens. ...