I am particularly interested in this topic for two reasons.  Firstly, because I am an eighteen-year-old, changing the MLDA to eighteen would impact me greatly.  Secondly, I am also a college student, and the consumption of alcohol (underage and legally) is notably prevalent on college campuses.  These facts also make me qualified to write about and discuss this topic.  The question of changing the MLDA to eighteen affects me because, if this law were implemented, I would have the option to legally drink alcohol.  This would also affect my values because I would have to make the decision to consume alcohol or not.  Personally, I have experience regarding this topic because I have researched this issue immensely, debated it at the Virginia Senate for Model General Assembly, and I am at the ideal age to discuss lowering the drinking age.

In Return the Drinking Age to 18, and Enforce It, Gabrielle Glaser claims that the drinking age should be lowered to eighteen because the current drinking age of twenty-one has not stopped underage people from drinking, but rather it has "driven it underground."  She proves this by stating that the number of cases of alcohol poisoning among eighteen to twenty-four year olds rose from 779 cases to 2,290.  Glaser seems to have saving human lives as her top priority in this article.  By emphasizing the point that lowering the minimum legal drinking age to eighteen would reduce the number of alcohol poisoning fatalities and binge drinking, she encourages the urgency of lowering the MLDA to save lives.  As an award-winning journalist and writer for The New York Times, Glaser has utmost credibility in the area of mental health and safety.  She addresses the opposing argument that raising the MLDA decreased drunk driving and refutes it by noting that stricter seatbelt laws and D.U.I. rules helped contribute to the decrease in accidents also. There is not a large amount of bias because all of the facts and statistics are presented in a way that would only make sense for her stance on the issue.  Additionally, she is not underage, which shows that she has no connection to the age that the MLDA would be lowered to.

Next, in Is the National Drinking Age Doing More Harm Than Good, Sam Tracy points out that it is irrational to forbid an eighteen-year-old to drink alcohol when they are considered adults who can join the military, get married, gamble, etc.  He suggests that since eighteen-year-olds have the right to do these things, they should also be able to drink legally.  Tracy's major values and interests in this article seem to be the rights of adults.  It is clear in his words that he believes adults should not be restricted from drinking alcohol when they have the rights to do many other arguably more dangerous things.  Sam Tracy is an extremely credible author because he experienced firsthand, through his job as a Resident Assistant in college, that the current drinking age isn't keeping underage people from drinking.  She also addresses the opposing argument of drunk driving fatalities and refutes it in the same way that Glaser did in her article.

In Why the Drinking Age Should Be Lowered: An Opinion Based Upon Research, Professor Ruth C. Engs relays the fact that, if the MLDA were lowered to eighteen, alcohol could be more easily monitored on college campuses because eighteen- to twenty-year-olds would not have to hide their drinking habits.  She also elaborates on the fact that the current drinking age is counterproductive in the sense that it only increases binge drinking for underage people.  This comes from the idea that people want what they cannot have. It seems that Engs' major interest is safety of young adults.  She explains that by lowering the drinking age, there would be less fatalities of young adults related to alcohol consumption.  Engs is particularly credible because of her position as a professor at Indiana University.  Here, she teaches Applied Health Sciences, which makes her a reliable subject to discuss the matter of lowering the drinking age.  As a professor, she has probably seen the prevalence of underage drinking on college campuses, and this could make her biased.

The question of lowering the drinking age to eighteen is arguable because of the fatalities linked in car accidents to underage drinking and the question of whether eighteen-year-olds are responsible enough to handle drinking alcohol.  I found that my sources agreed on the fact that the current drinking age forces underage people to drink in hiding.  I also found, however, that they disagreed on the matter that drinking and driving would increase for underage people if the MLDA was lowered.  After reading these sources, I was intrigued to learn even more about this topic, but I was not swayed in my opinion.  Lastly, I feel that I could revise my research question to be more specific, such as "Why Lowering the Drinking Age to Eighteen Would Save Lives."

