Lowering The Drinking Age
...obligations and responsibilities we obtain at other ages? Although we can be selected for military service or be convicted for our actions as full adults, we can still not legally purchase and consume alcoholic beverages like citizens ages 21 and older. Is this fair?
Underage drinking in the US is a big problem that we spend obscene amounts of money every year trying to prevent.
According to preliminary data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in 2006, 17,941 people were killed in alcohol-related crashes - an average of one every half-hour. These deaths constituted approximately 41 percent of the 43,300 total traffic fatalities. Drunk (those at or above an illegal BAC of .08) drivers were involved in 13990 fatalities in 2006(MADD Online:Statistics).
Drinking and driving is a huge problem in the US, for both adults and minors. "Young drivers are less likely than adults to drive after drinking alcohol, but their crash risks are substantially higher when they do(Underage Drinking)". The risk of an underage drinker getting in an accident is one thing that really shows how the law was formed. After all, the government has to try to protect its citizens.
Alcohol can have long term, or short term debilitating effects on the brain for heavy drinkers, and even moderate drinkers.
We do know that heavy drinking may have extensive and far–reaching effects on the brain, ranging from simple "slips" in memory to permanent and debilitating conditions that require lifetime custodial care. And even moderate drinking leads to short–term impairment, as shown by extensive research on the impact of drinking on driving(Alcohol Alert).
This is important because according to modern psychology, the brain is not fully developed by age 18, and you don't want to damage something you haven't even been able to use to its full potential yet. Our brains...
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