...Highway Policy Age—it is nothing but a number—as many people say. With age comes wisdom, and with wisdom, wise decisions are made. Maintaining the minimum legal drinking age at 21 will deter life-long consequences, decrease traffic fatalities in result of alcohol consumption, and relieve issues in relation to public safety. In 1984, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act mandated that all states increase the minimum age purchase and consumption to 21. Under the Federal Highway Aid act, also referred to as the National Interstate of Defense Highways Act which was established in 1956, states that do not adhere to this requirement faced a highway-fund cutback consequence. Underage drinking, which affects many adolescent-and-young-adult households, is a problem and a significant public health concerns. It is correlated with an abundant array of damaging consequences (Spoth, Greenberg, & Turrisi, 2009, pg. 1, para. 1). Over the past several decades or so, the Minimum Legal Drinking Age (MLDA) has raised debate in the United States. The influence to decrease the MLDA from 21 to 18, 19, or 20 came from a decrease in the legal voting age to 18. A total of 29 states lowered their MLDA between the years of 1970 to 1975. Because of this poorly thought through revision, traffic collision due to alcohol consumption have dramatically increased in adults between the ages of 18-20. With such dramatic outcomes of the MLDA, state-level movements to reverse the MLDA back to the age of 21 came underway...
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...Today, the consumption of alcohol by anyone under the age of 21 is generally illegal across the United States; however, there are some states that have exceptions allowing underage consumption of alcohol in certain circumstances. Underage drinking is allowed if done on private premises with parental consent or for religious purposes. In Ruth Engs’ opinion, based upon her research, “as a nation we have tried prohibition legislation twice in the past for controlling irresponsible drinking problems. This was during National Prohibition in the 1920’s and State Prohibition during the 1850’s. These laws were finally repealed because they were unenforceable and because the backlash towards them caused other social problems. Today we are repeating history and making the same mistakes that occurred in the past. Prohibition did not work then and prohibition for young people under the age of 21 is not working now” (Engs). On many campuses around the country, led by the so-called Amethyst Initiative, the legal drinking age continues to be a controversial issue since it is believed that “twenty-one is not working” (Sanghavi). The old familiar argument is that turning 18 bestows the rights and responsibilities of adulthood such as voting, serving on juries, getting married, signing contracts, joining the military, buying cigarettes, watching porn and upon prosecution, trial as an adult. If adults from the age of 18 are trusted to do all of these things, they should also be trusted...
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...drinking age should be lowered to the age of eighteen. The Minimum Legal Drinking Age has changed from each state setting their own to the government passing the National Drinking Age Act of 1984 making the drinking age twenty-one. The drinking age should be lowered because eighteen is the age of maturity, helps for better control, and helps stop binge drinking and sneaking around. The drinking age should stay at twenty-one because it is medically irresponsible and helps prevent addiction. The bible neither condones nor encourages the usage of alcohol but does warn and gives rules about it. The drinking age should be lowered because it benefits the teaching and control of alcohol. The Drinking Age Should Be Lowered to...
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...years and older are considered adults and should be treated as such by being allowed to legally purchase and consume alcohol. The United States is one of the few countries that maintains a relatively high minimum legal drinking age of 21. Should the drinking age be lowered from 21 to 18? Well, in a way the drinking age should be lowered to 18, because we have persons that go into the armed forces at the age of 18. We also have the buying of tobacco products, by 18-year-olds. 18 -year-olds are also allowed to make decisions and vote for leaders of our local, state, and federal governments. So why are they not allowed to drink? The drinking age should be lowered from 21 to 18 because 18 year olds are responsible adults that are part of society and are mature enough to handle alcohol consumption. To begin with, the definition of an adult is a person who has attained the age of maturity as specified by law. In the USA, that age is 18, and with every American's 18th birthday comes all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of becoming an adult. When becoming an adult you are given more freedom in life; such as applying for a credit card, being legally married without parental consent, filing for divorce, paying rent/mortgage, making purchases, signing a binding contract, voting, serving on a jury and serving in the military. If charged with a crime, the 18-year-old is no longer tried in juvenile court; he's tried as an adult. In overall, an 18, 19 and 20-year-old can do everything...
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...5/21/12 Why We Should Keep the Drinking Age at Twenty-one Imagine winning the State Basketball Championship. You get back to your house with a few friends and feel a party is in order, so you start drinking a few beers after your parents go to bed. Someone suggests that you drive somewhere to get rid of the empty cans. “Yes, that’s not a bad idea”, so you all pile into the car and take off. A few hours later, your parents receive a telephone call to come down to the station. There has been a terrible accident, and they must identify the body. This is the one phone call all parents dread. This true story is detailed in the Germantown, Tennessee high school newspaper. Stories like this compel me to believe that the legal drinking age should be kept at twenty-one. Almost every state set a legal drinking age of twenty-one, the legal voting age at the time, after prohibition was repealed. Between 1970 and 1975, twenty-nine states lowered the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen, twenty-nine states also lowered their drinking age to eighteen or nineteen. During the late seventies, studies showed that traffic crashes had drastically increased after lowering the drinking age. Once this was announced publicly, many groups created a movement to increase the minimal drinking age, and sixteen states responded. The Uniform Drinking Act was passed in 1984. This strongly encouraged the remaining thirteen states to raise their drinking age. If the states would not agree to do...
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...Topic: Speech Title: General Purpose: Specific Purpose: There should be one age limit on when we are considered adults. I. Introduction A. Attention-getter: “In most of the world including most of the United States, parts of the United Kingdom, India, and China, the legal adult age is 18 and historically was 21.” B. Common ground: We are all on this journey to adulthood and with this weeks’ worth of information I will soon provide for you will answer this question. What age limit will society/government consider us as adults? C. Credibility: Why should we believe you? D. Thesis: What is the main point of this speech? E. Preview: What will we learn from your speech? Transition sentence between Intro and Body: Lead us away from the Intro to the Body: II. Body A. Main Point #1: Financial aid is a “benefit” that can either help or stack up loans for a college student. Due to the fact, not everyone is considered eligible for it, even though based off a system that investigates your parent’s income for your financial need, says you are able to pay for tuition without guidance. How can that be if all the help I am receiving is money from the government I must...
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...Lemmon Mrs. Bittle English 112 20 April 2014 Carry a Gun, Drink a Beer Drinking a beer while under the age of eighteen is a crime and is frowned upon by many but no one would say anything to a man drinking a beer in a military uniform or having a beer with their father. Many of our underage society have consumed alcohol one time or another before the legal drinking age of 21. Tosmarttostart.com states that “By age 18, more than 70 percent of teens have had at least one drink”. The government should lower the legal drinking age to eighteen to coincide with other similar laws pertaining to younger adults. The legal drinking age should be lowered to eighteen. If male or female join the military in our country and are legally able to hold a gun and defend our nation they should be able to legally consume alcohol before the age of twenty-one. Just as being allowed by the law to join the military and defend our nation and what we know, as freedom is a huge responsibility. Saying that, many of those young men or women that defend our freedom should be able to legally enjoy a beer or any consumption of alcohol when they feel the need. According to the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act “States prohibit persons under 21 years of age from purchasing or publicly Lemmon 2 possessing or consuming alcoholic beverages”. Not being able to legally consume alcohol under the age of twenty-one, but can be employed to defend our freedom by the same government who makes the law, is very...
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...Legal Drinking Age to 18 Danielle Gonzales The government can trust those between the age of 18 and 20 to do many things, but they cannot treat them like full adults and allow them to drink alcohol. You will find that many Colleges and Universities disagree with the legal drinking age. In fact, they believe that rising the drinking age has increased the amount of ‘binge’ drinkers and only made our countries drinking problems worse. Eighty-five percent of twenty year old Americans reported that they had used alcohol. (Johnson) Two out of five said they had binged within the previous month. To ‘binge,’ is to consume five or more drinks at one time. (Engs) “The period since the twenty-one minimum drinking age took affect has been marked by a shift from beer to hard liquor,” Seaman wrote in Time “consumed not in large social settings, since that is now illegal, but furtively and dangerously in students residences. In my reporting at colleges around the country, I did not meet any presidents or deans who felt the twenty-one year age minimum helps their efforts to curb the abuse of alcohol on their campuses.” (Balk) A kid is going to drink if he or she wants to regardless whether the law says eighteen or twenty-one. In an alcohol related situation you are more likely going to hear “I don’t drink, thank you,” than “I better not, I’m not 21 yet.” When colleges and University presidents disagree with the drinking age, something has got to be done. If the drinking age were changed...
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...3/24/2013 Argumentative research paper Why Not Change the Drinking Age Back to 18? In the United States of America you are considered a legal adult at the age of 18 years old. You have all the major rights of a fully grown adult, voting, enlisting in the military, buying a house, buying tobacco products and many more. However there is one right that was taken away from the 18 year old adult back in 1984. In 1984 the National Minimum Drinking Age Act was put into place which changed the legal minimum drinking age from 18 years old to 21. Does this law mean that you are not really a mature adult until you are 21 or should the drinking age be brought back down to 18 when you receive all the other rights of a mature adult. It makes perfect sense that this right should be returned to young adults for plenty of reasons and also holds potential solutions to one of the nation’s biggest alcohol related problems. What does it mean to be an adult? United States law states that you are legally considered an adult at the age of 18. It makes sense right? You can buy a house, enlist in the U.S. military, get married and loads of other rights you don’t have until the age of 18. But United States law also states that all states must enforce a legal minimum drinking age of 21. We are the only major nation to have such a high drinking age. The drinking age wasn’t always this high though. On July 17th 1984 the national minimum drinking age act was passed which meant that 18 year old young adults could...
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...The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 required that all States prohibit people under the age of twenty one from purchasing or publicly possessing alcohol beverages. This act is currently a law in all 50 states. This is a debate about whether or not should the national drinking age should remain at the age of twenty one or if it should be lowered to the age of eighteen. With this topic having many concerns, like health, having the minimum alcohol consumption lowered to the age of eighteen would give a sense of adulthood that should, so to speak, follow up with turning eighteen years old on ones birthday. With that, the age limit to purchase and consume alcohol should be lowered to the age of 18 in the United States. In the United States, adulthood begins at the age of eighteen. Some would say that with age also comes with responsibilities. In the United States turning eighteen means becoming a legal adult with new and different rights, responsibilities, and privileges from those of minors. Such privileges as having voting rights, ability to get legally married, legally sign contracts and other legal documents, have the ability to buy and smoke tobacco products, join the military and much more things without the consult of a parent because one is considered to be an adult at that age (ProCon). A drinking age of twenty one is an embarrassment to a supposedly liberty-loving nation. If you are old enough to enlist and old enough to vote, you are old enough to swill cheap...
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...old adult so you cannot legally consume alcohol yet. But don’t worry, you can still fight and die for your country. How can we possibly send 18 year olds to war, but not allow them to drink alcohol? To adults under the age of 21, alcohol is seen as a forbidden fruit. Since they cannot legally have it, they want it that much more. So when they are granted an opportunity to drink, they do so in a dangerous way. This binge drinking is where many alcohol related injuries come from, and what must be decreased. According to our laws, an 18 year old has enough maturity and judgment to drive a car, sign a legally binding contract, perform jury duty, and vote. Why shouldn’t they be able to decide if they want a drink or not? The drinking age should be lowered to the age of majority, which at this time, is 18. This decrease in the drinking age will allow young adults to safely consume alcohol in regulated environments. In turn, this will decrease the risk of alcohol-related injuries that result from unsupervised drinking. When a person turns 18 they are treated like adults, but with this new policy, they will truly be adults. First we must examine how the drinking age got set at its current minimum. After the repeal of prohibition in 1933 many states set the legal age...
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...210 9 June 2015 In 1971 voting age was changed from twenty-one to eighteen. Many states rationalized that “If young Americans could be entrusted to vote, serve on a jury, and fight in Vietnam, why couldn't they order a beer? “ For this reason during the late 1970s, the majority of the states in the United States (U.S.) also changed legal drinking age to eighteen. Subsequently, an increase in traffic fatalities in the states with the lowered drinking age forced state legislatures to reevaluate the drinking age. With a few exceptions on a state-by-state basis the minimum drinking age is now set to twenty-one in the U.S. In the U.S. at the point when an individual turns eighteen they are perceived as lawful adults with the rights to vote, serve on juries, get married, sign contracts, be indicted as adults, and join the military which incorporates taking a chance with one's life. There are less intoxicated driving car crashes and fatalities in numerous nations with the base legitimate drinking age of eighteen. In spite of the fact that the U.S. expanded the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) to twenty-one in 1984, its rate of auto accidents and fatalities in the 1980s diminished not as much as that of European nations whose MLDA are lower than twenty-one. The diminishing in inebriated driving fatalities as a rate of aggregate activity fatalities in the U.S. does not relate to the MLDA. Since 1982, two years before the Uniform Drinking Age Act setting up a MLDA of twenty-one...
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...Should Abortion be Legal? PHI 103 Should Abortion be legal? Part I: Thesis As we approach a presidential election, a hot topic has been abortion. The candidates have announced their stance of either being pro-choice or pro-life. Many people have based their choices on who they will vote for based on this stance, especially women. The United States of America was founded by those fleeing from religious persecution. In an article from the News Mail Bundaberg, the writer wrote that they did not “believe abortion should be used as a lazy form of contraception, but nor do I believe women's bodies should be legislated. Some say abortion is "playing God", but then so is all medicine” (unknown, 2010) Legalizing abortion guarantees that women receive the basic right to choose what happens with their own reproductive systems. Part II: Argument The right to choose is a big deciding factor in agreeing that abortion should be legal. There are certain instances in which a woman should be able to choose if they would like to continue with their pregnancy. For example, if a woman was raped and became pregnant, they should be able to choose whether or not they would like to have that child. Otherwise, they will end up with a child that they have to take care of that will be a constant reminder of that rape. Another instance is incest. If a woman is pregnant and the fetus is fathered by a family member, that woman should have a right to choose if they would like to have that child or...
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...The legal drinking age should be lowered in the United States. This makes the most sense because kids legally become an adult at the age of 18 where they are granted other rights as well, such as the ability to enlist in the army. If we are legally an adult and trusted to protect our country we should be trusted with a couple of drinks. Lowering the drinking age also decreases unsafe drinking in regulated environments and less drunk driving accidents. With regulated drinking kids become more aware with their alcohol tolerance and get used to it in a safe environment without doing it illegally. This creates a safer environment for everyone. With kids more aware of their intake of alcohol less accidents such as drunk driving will happen. The is why the drinking age should be lowered to the age of when you actually become an adult. Kids legally become an adult at the age of 18. At this time in your life you receive the rights and responsibilities of adulthood. Some examples of the choices that you might or can make are enlisting in the army, voting for president, buying lottery tickets...
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...Essay 2 Rough Draft Writing 123 Enthymeme: The minimum legal drinking age in the United States should not be lowered from 21 to 18 because the legal drinking age is in place to protect young people at a time when irresponsible behavior is prevalent. The Minimum Legal Drinking Age Debate Since 2008, 136 college chancellors and presidents have signed the Amethyst Initiative, asking that the United States reconsider the minimum legal drinking age-21 (MLDA-21) laws that have been in place in all 50 states since 1984. The Amethyst Initiative argues that the MLDA-21 laws simply do not work, create a culture of binge-drinking, and that a policy of legalization and education would be more effective in protecting the safety of American adolescents. Elisabeth Muhlenfeld, the president of Sweet Briar College in Virginia and Amethyst Initiative signatory writes that 70 percent of the student population is underage. Teaching abstinence to students that blatantly ignore the MLDA-21 laws, or urging responsible behavior while drinking underage and breaking the law, are both hypocritical positions for the college administration to be in (Muhlenfeld 2). The Amethyst Initiative position is that current MLDA-21 laws have created a culture of heavy alcohol use by making drinking clandestine and extreme (Saylor 1). The statistics seem to back up this claim. Recent survey's of the 18-20 year old population by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services show that a full 72 percent report...
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