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sample essay on legal drinking age in the us

Legal Drinking Age: 18 v. 21 Essay

Legal age of 18, military drafting and voting.

The minimum legal drinking age is 21 years. Each year thousands of students graduate from high school and in celebration, they hold house parties which include alcohol consumption. Most of these high school leavers are under the age of 21. During this period, there are always numerous debates coming up about whether to lower the legal drinking age or not, however while this is going on, teenagers under 21 become binge drinkers (Seaman, 2006).

As most of them are under the alcohol buying age, they use illegal means like faking identification to be allowed to buy alcoholic drinks. The government is spending millions of dollars in a campaign to maintain to maintain the MLDA of 21. The government considers 18 year old teenagers as immature and that they are not able to make the right decisions.

How can the government consider 18 year olds not mature to make decisions and yet at this age they are considered adults? The very definition of an adult is that one has attained a mature age, which is 18. The key word here is mature, therefore to go against this and say 18 year olds are not mature to make informed choices on alcohol consumption, is going against the law.

The legal age makes an individual independent, the teenagers who have attained this age are allowed to move out of their parents’ houses, get jobs and even get married and have their own children. Curtailing alcohol consumption at this age goes against the fundamental rights of the young adults.

It is so ironical that the government considers 18 year olds adults, when the situations work on their favour, and yet oppose the same young adults when it comes to alcohol. This is a double standard employed by government.

If these young adults are not allowed to consume alcohol by virtue of their age, then they should also not be allowed to be drafted in to the military. However, 18 year olds are considered adults who can vote, join the military, hold public offices, be tried as adults; they can hold jobs and are expected to pay taxes. In this sense they are just like any other adults in the society.

If they are mature enough to make the decisions to join the military and go to war and even die for their country, then they should also be allowed to consume alcohol. When politicians want to get to office or seek re-election, they do not discriminate against who votes for them, all votes are the same to them.

A large number of the voters going by the recent voting trend seem to be the young adults who have just attained the legal age to vote. They are enthusiastic and ready to exercise their rights. If the politicians expect them to make the right choices when it comes to voting, then they are adult enough to take alcohol (Wechsler, 2002).

There is no justification in arguing that the 18 year olds are less tolerant than 21 year olds. In some cases, the situations are reverse. Not all 18 year olds are immature; most of them have developed psychological and analytical character. Prohibiting them from legally buying and consuming alcohol will only promote rebellion and crimes related to alcohol, like driving under the influence of alcohol.

Seaman, B. (2006). Binge: What your college student won’t tell you . New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons ltd.

Wechsler, H. (2002). Dying to drink: Confronting binge drinking in college campuses. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

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IvyPanda. (2018, October 31). Legal Drinking Age: 18 v. 21. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-drinking-age/

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  • Legal Age of Drinking and Debates Worldwide Words: 611
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The Effectiveness of the Minimum Legal Drinking Age

Introduction.

After Prohibition was repealed, each state created laws to control the sale, distribution, and consumption of alcoholic drinks. In addition to the Minimum Legal Drinking Age (MLDA), other alcohol control laws include excise taxes, restrictions on the days and hours of alcohol sales, and server training. Recent studies have evaluated the efficiency of some of these new alcohol prohibitions. Of all the alcohol control programs, the MLDA policy has been the subject of the most investigation. According to Fell (2019), their thorough literature reviews include detailed explanations of several of these studies.

Compared to other countries, there have been considerable differences in the study methodologies used to examine how the MLDA has affected alcohol use, which has led to inconsistent results. According to Fell (2019), studies that used reliable research and analytical techniques often discovered increases in teen drinking when the MLDA was dropped. However, teen drinking decreased when numerous states tightened the MLDA.

Even if a higher MLDA decreased children’s alcohol intake, opponents of the age-21 MLDA contended drinking rates and problems associated with alcohol would rise among adults. In other words, opponents worried that a “rubber band” effect would develop, in which young people would drink more often than if they were allowed to at a younger age to “make up for lost time” and use alcohol at higher rates. This idea is disproved by Hansen and Waddell (2018). Additionally, they discovered that the lower rates of alcohol use linked to a high legal drinking age continued even after teenagers turned 21 using a national probability sample.

The MLDA in the US is 21 years of age. But the legal drinking age varied from state to state before the National Minimum Drinking Age Act was passed in 1984. The legal drinking age in the US is 21, but each state has laws governing how it is applied. The following punishments might be imposed on anybody found guilty of trying to get alcohol or possessing it when underage. The goal of this section is to present a thorough list of potential sanctions. This is not a comprehensive list of all disciplinary measures available in each jurisdiction. Still, it guides some potential sanctions for underage drinking in each state.

Fell, J. C. (2019). Approaches for reducing alcohol-impaired driving: Evidence-based legislation, law enforcement strategies, sanctions, and alcohol-control policies. Forensic science review , 31 (2).

Hansen, B., & Waddell, G. R. (2018). Legal access to alcohol and criminality . Journal of health economics , 57 , 277-289.

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StudyCorgi. (2023, August 7). The Effectiveness of the Minimum Legal Drinking Age. https://studycorgi.com/legal-drinking-age-in-the-united-states-essay-examples/

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StudyCorgi . "The Effectiveness of the Minimum Legal Drinking Age." August 7, 2023. https://studycorgi.com/legal-drinking-age-in-the-united-states-essay-examples/.

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Home / Essay Samples / Law / Legal Drinking Age / Raising Legal Drinking Age

Raising Legal Drinking Age

  • Category: Law
  • Topic: Alcohol Law , Legal Drinking Age

Pages: 4 (1679 words)

  • Downloads: -->

List of references

  • Gordon, John Steele. 'It’s Time to Do Away with the Minimum Drinking Age Act.' Gale
  • Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2019. Gale In Context: Opposing
  • Viewpoints, https://ezproxy.mcckc.edu:2515/apps/doc/LVFQQQ352448880/OVIC?u=morekcmetroccpv&sid =OVIC&xid=1c37b226. Accessed 11 Nov. 2019. Originally published as 'Repeal the Uniform Drinking Age Act,' Commentary, 19 Jan. 2016.
  • Hanson, David, and Matt Wolcoff. 'There Is No Evidence that Age-Twenty-One Drinking Laws
  • Protect Youth.' Alcohol, edited by Andrea C. Nakaya, Greenhaven Press, 2008. Opposing Viewpoints. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, https://ezproxy.mcckc.edu:2515/apps/doc/EJ3010217288/OVIC?u=morekcmetroccpv&sid=OVIC&xid=e143a3a9. Accessed 20 Nov. 2019. Originally published as 'Age of Propaganda: The Government Attacks Teenage Drinking with Junk Science,' Reason, Oct. 2004.
  • Kim, Ahhyun. 'Lowering the legal drinking age.' Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection,
  • Gale, 2019. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, https://ezproxy.mcckc.edu:2515/apps/doc/JOIIOX400126340/OVIC?u=morekcmetroccpv&sid=OVIC&xid=af16f95d. Accessed 19 Nov. 2019. Originally published as 'Lowering the legal drinking age,' American Thinker, 11 Dec. 2018.
  • Luciana, Monica, et al. “Effects of Alcohol Use Initiation on Brain Structure in Typically
  • Developing Adolescents.” American Journal of Drug & Alcohol Abuse, vol. 39, no. 6, Nov. 2013, pp. 345–355. EBSCOhost, doi:10.3109/00952990.2013.837057.
  • 'Minimum Drinking Age: Should the minimum drinking age in the United States remain 21?'
  • Issues & Controversies, Infobase, 12 May 2006, https://icof.infobaselearning.com/recordurl.aspx?ID=2351. Accessed 11 Nov. 2019.
  • “What You Can Legally Do When You’re 18” The Law Dictionary, Blacks Law Dictionary Free
  • 2nd Ed. https://thelawdictionary.org/article/what-you-can-legally-do-when-youre-18/. Accessed 19 Nov. 2019 

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