For the past 30 years, the United States has maintained a National Minimum Drinking Age Act, with long term public debate about the violation of civil liberties of this policy, especially in youth rights. As a matter of fact, at eighteen years old, young people can take on many adult responsibilities, but they do not have the right to consume alcohol. Indeed, they have the rights to vote, smoke cigarettes, serve on juries, get married, sue others, be sued, be imprisoned, sign contracts, be prosecuted as adults, and join the military which includes risking one's life. Even though they now considered legal adults with all of these privileges, they are denied the right to purchase and drink alcohol. Prohibiting persons under the age of 21 to enjoy
The background of the case is a conflict between the state and the federal government over the creation of a minimum drinking age. The conflict was pursued when a car with four friends, all of age nineteen on a summer evening in 1984, crosses the state line into South Dakota where they could legally purchase beer. During the year of 1984, lawmakers in Washington D.C. we’re fortifying the National Minimum Drink Age Amendment which proclaimed that states who refuse to raise their drinking age to 21 would be deducted from 5% federal highway funds by the Secretary of Transportation. South Dakota challenged the rule because it is a state that legalized persons 19 years of age to procure alcohol. The law in question was whether Congress was in violation of the Twenty-first Amendment which granted states the elite power to regulate alcohol.
In this article “Minimum Drinking Age: Should the minimum drinking age in the United States remain 21?” the author describes both sides of the argument with lots of evidence and facts to back up both sides. Just before that the article states some background information about the topic and what it was like in the 1970 - 2000. He says that before 1970 the Legal Drinking Age was lower than 21 but got changed because of an outcry of people complaining of a lot of drunk driving accidents. The first stars starting changing their laws in 1975. Ever since that date it has been a debate whether it should’ve changed back or not. The author then goes into the first argument. The first argument was what the supporters argue: what supporters say. The author
The United States is one of the four countries in the world with a legal drinking age as high, or higher, than 21 years of age. Reportedly the reason for this is because it helps to lower th
In the United States of America, there is a minimum drinking age of 21. The legal drinking age legally specifies the youngest age in which a person is allowed to consume and purchase alcoholic beverages. From country to country, there are varying ages of legal drinking ages. There is much debate in the United States on whether the legal drinking age should be lowered to eighteen from twenty one, or should remain the same. People in favor of lowering the drinking age propose that since eighteen is characterized as being an adult (legally and socially), one of the rights that should come along with that is drinking alcohol. Also, that if we were to lower the drinking age, less young adults would be
First, I will discuss why 18 year olds should be entitled to the right to consume alcohol when they hit adulthood, rather than waiting until the age of 21. When you turn 18 years old you’re allowed to vote in elections, get married, smoke, get tried in a court of law as an adult, gamble, get life insurance, and fight in the armed forces
Drinking alcohol otherwise known as ethanol is a legal drug manufactured in different percentages and various drinking beverages. Ethanol is a naturally occurring colorless liquid produced by fermentation which is an anaerobic chemical process which yeast decomposes sugars and is converted into alcohol and carbon dioxide without the presence of oxygen. Normal alcohol percentages range from about 2% up to 60% and while some other beverages can range higher. In the U.S. there has been recent studies to deny the proposal to lower the alcohol consumption laws from 21 to 18. The drinking laws in the United States include The National Minimum Drinking Age Law which was passed on July 17, 1984 by the United States Congress to structure and control the consumption of alcohol. The National Minimum Drinking Age Law prohibits any age limit under 21 to
The Minimum Legal Drinking Age(MLDA) in the United States needs to be lowered from 21 to 18. The MLDA being so high simply facilitates unsupervised binge-drinking among minors. Lowering the MLDA will allow those aged 18-21 to drink in a safer environment leading to a reduction in underage alcohol-related accidents.
There has been a debate on lowering the drinking age from twenty-one to eighteen. There are many reasons why this policy should not be passed. At the age of eighteen in the United States one is considered as an adult to make there own decisions, vote, and are allowed to buy Tabaco. Drinking is not one of them. Studies have shown that there are scientific reasons this should not happen. First drinking can be very harmful to the body, causing severe symptoms. Second the drinking and driving rate would increase. Finally, eighteen year olds are not as mature as twenty-one year olds. They are not as fully developed as twenty-one year olds. All of these are factors that contribute to why the drinking age should not be lowered.
Minimum limited drinking age law in America was passed more than 30 years ago. Therefore, it needed to be altered to catch up with today’s world. Teenagers today are no longer the kind of teenager back in the 1980s. Now, they have access to information on the Internet, they were taught how alcoholic drinks affect to the body, they were supervised by their parents closely. Moreover, teenagers even have legal access to voting, driving, owning a car,...and they can be jailed up if they break the law, sentenced in prison if the crime was serious enough. Therefore, teenager should be able to control of their life and have access to alcohol as a right they supposed to have long time ago.
Since the states increased their drinking age to 21 in 1987, every citizen of this country between the ages of 18 and 20 have been oppressed by the very people elected to power to protect their rights. It is evident that the legal drinking age among Americans should be lowered to the legal age of adulthood, 18 years. At this age, any American can marry without their Parent’s approval and can move out of their guardian’s house and live on their own. Why are these adults deprived of their right to consume alcohol? A police officer unexpectedly arrived at a party where many young adults were drinking alcoholic beverages. He asked to see two young gentlemen’s identification to prove that they were of legal age to be consuming. Both were
In the 1980s, the United States raised the Minimum Legal Drinking Age (MLDA) to 21, from 18, in an attempt to protect the nation 's youth. This placed the USA among the few countries whose drinking age is above 18. These countries include most of Canada, the Republic of Korea, Nicaragua, Iceland, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Egypt, Indonesia, Micronesia, and Palau (Jernigan). Around the world, drinking ages vary; for example, in Slovenia, Italy, Portugal, Malta and Greece, you can drink before you turn 18, and in parts of India, you cannot legally obtain alcohol until age 25 (Jernigan; Mukherjee). This leads to an important question on whether our democracy should lower the MLDA. The facts on underage drinking, international data on lower drinking ages, current enforcement of underage drinking laws, as well as proposed implications of programs coupled with a lower drinking age provides provoking data pointing towards the ethical lowering of the drinking age. The democracy of the United States of America should lower the MLDA, but also adopt a mandatory alcohol education class, and a graduated licensing system.
In 1984, Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which required all fifty states to raise their ages for purchase and public possession of alcohol to age twenty one by October, 1986. President Reagan passed this act in response to the large number of sixteen to twenty year olds who were killed or injured in alcohol related accidents (Alcohol Policy Information System). If a state chose to not raise the drinking age, then they would lose 10% of their federal highway funds (Alcohol Policy Information System). The states had lowered their purchase ages to 18 or similar previous to the passing of this act in response to the arguments of: “If you’re old enough to die for our country, then you’re old enough to drink,” or “You are a legal adult, you shouldn’t be denied the right to make your own decisions on alcohol consumption.” While these statements do present a valid argument,
Everyone knows that the United States’s drinking age is at 21, much higher than England’s drinking age. Many people believe that we cause way less destructions than the people of England, but that’s not true. We actually cause more accidents and destructions than they do. The United States’s death rate is actually ranked 39 out of 172 countries at 2.91 while England is ranked at 1.70 on a scale of death rate per 100,000. ("ALCOHOL DEATH RATE BY COUNTRY." World Life Expectancy. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Nov. 2016.) In this case, America’s legal drinking age should be lowered.
United States is one of the few countries in the world with drinking age over twenty one years. In a country where eighteen years olds are allowed to vote, are allowed smoke, are allowed buy guns, are considered as adults and moreover are drafted in the military where they put their lives in danger for the safety of all of the citizens of this country, however, they are too immature to drink. All the adults should have the right to drink alcohol, and it should be legal for a person who is ready to take care of the country by not just being in military, but by voting in election, making choices that are best for him and the country, to drink when he is eighteen years of age.
The minimum drinking age in the U.S. have questioned and in continuous debate to keep 21 years as minimum dinking age or lowering to 18 years. There are many opinions and arguments for those who approve a change and those who defend the policy. The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 stablish 21 years as the minimum age to consume, purchasing or publicly possessing of alcoholic beverages. People that support this law affirm that are more the benefits on keep or even raising 21 years old as minimum age to drink since the car accident have been decreasing since the approve of this act. In the other hand, people who are against this law, argue that keeping or even raising the minimum legal age to consume alcoholic beverages have not change