Keep It at 21

I do not think that the drinking age should be lowered from 21 to 18. I believe that most 18 year-olds are not mature enough to handle the responsible of alcohol consumption. According to Narcotic Education Foundation of America and Drug Abuse Education Provider of the California Narcotic Officers’ Association, the brain does not stop development until a person is in his or her early to mid-20s and that consuming alcohol at this time affects coordination, motion control, thinking, memory and other mental processes.

In their book, The Truth about Alcohol, Berry Youngerman and Mark J. Kittleson state when the drinking age was raised by many states in the late 1980s, the number of car crashed caused by teenage drunken drivers greatly decline.

Those who support lowering the drinking age believe that it will save lives, because it will decrease binge drinking. Also, according to Ruth C. Engs, a Applied Health Sciences Professor at Indiana University, a majority of college students drink alcohol irresponsibly, seeing as “an enticing “forbidden fruit,” a “badge of rebellion against authority” and a “symbol of adulthood”” Engs believes that the Prohibition didn’t work and that raising the drinking age to 21 isn’t work now.

But according to The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the law that set the legal drinking age to 21 is already saving lives, approximately 1,000 a year. Also, according to a fact sheet released online by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the Center for Disease Control reviewed near 50 studies of countries that changed their drinking age and found that when it was lowered to 18, the fatality rate increased by 10 percent. In the same fact sheet, it is stated that when the drinking age is lowered, injuries and deaths greatly increase.