Dropping the Drinking Age?

A movement that is pretty down low is occurring. People are allowed to vote at eighteen and they are able to fight for their country at eighteen but they can not drink until they are twenty-one. Safety officials are in strong objection to the idea of changing the age of the drinking age to eighteen. This would be a good thing in one way which would be illegal liquor making and illegal drinking habits. "Raising the drinking age to 21 was passed with the very best of intentions, but it's had the very worst of outcomes," said David J. Hanson, an alcohol policy specialist at the State University of New York-Potsdam. "Just like during national Prohibition, the law has pushed and forced underage drinking and youthful drinking underground, where we have no control over it." That is the only upside on this debate. Not many people support this idea, but the some that do actually have a point. "It does not reduce drinking. It has simply put young adults at greater risk," says John M. McCardell, former president of Middlebury College in Vermont, who set up an organization called Choose Responsibility for a lower drinking age. Even the parents do not want this law to happen.

If this law is going to take place anytime soon, the streets will have way more accidents. From 1975 the law that was passed about the age requirements being twenty-one, twenty-two thousand lives was saved. Facts show that when teens drink and drive, they are more likely to not wear a seat belt which will cause most certainly a fatal accident, if one is too occur. That is almost thirty-two years that the law has been intact and not messed with. Mark Rosenker, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board who deeply hates this idea, argues: "Why would we repeal or weaken laws that save lives? It does not make sense." In my opinion, I think this would be a horrible idea. More deaths and more drinkers in the US would make it more chaotic here. Even though illegally drinking is still able, not as many kids do it compared to what would happen when they have the right to actually do it. The drinking age should not be lowered. If it is then kids will have more deaths and the death rate of car accidents will become radically raised. I do not support the lowering of the drinking age of the United States.