“Alcoholism is a brain disease and the earlier people start drinking, the worse the effects on the brain. Besides, research has shown that the earlier people start drinking, the more likely they are to develop alcohol problems later in life” (Jacinto). The reciter of this quote is Ruth Sanchez Way, director of the Center of Substance Abuse Prevention. This agency strides to provide national leadership in the development of policies and programs to halt illegal drug use, prohibit alcohol use by minors, and reduce the negative consequences of using such substances. Among their responsibilities lies an issue that is currently the most popular debate topic surrounding underage alcohol consumption: whether or not the minimum legal drinking age in the United States should be lowered to eighteen years old. The controversy over whether or not the federal government should in fact pass legislation to lower the legal drinking age has been up in the air for quite some time. There have been several groups and organizations campaigning for the government to take action a few years after the Minimum Legal Drinking Age Act of 1984 was passed, but to no avail. The United States Government has maintained the age of twenty-one as the minimum for its citizens to legally purchase and consume alcoholic beverages, which proves to be beneficial every single year. So, why would lowering the drinking age to eighteen years old be detrimental to our society? Ordinary citizens must be informed about how harmful alcohol can be to those who abuse it and those who are underage that choose to experiment in their teenage years. The truth is that lowering the minimum legal drinking age in the United States to eighteen years old would be destructive to our society. If government action were taken and a new bill was passed into law, there would be greater exposure to alcohol-related traffic incidents, new alarming concern over public health and safety, and a dangerous trickle-down effect would ensue, setting up today’s youth for disaster. 

The legal drinking age in the United States came to be following the passage of the Minimum Legal Drinking Age Act in 1984. Prior to this bill being enacted into law, states had the authority to set and maintain their own minimum legal drinking ages. It was not until the military draft lottery during the Vietnam war that the circumstances surrounding alcohol consumption received a call of attention. In order to be drafted to serve in the United States military, a citizen had to be at least eighteen years old. At this time, the legal voting age had been decreased to eighteen as well in order to deal with social upheaval, which led to twenty-nine states lowering their legal drinking ages to eighteen, nineteen, or twenty years old (Toomey). However, after emerging evidence indicated an increase in traffic-related incidents, residents from states began efforts to raise the drinking age. 

After enough national attention was garnered, the national government prepared a patchwork law in order to comply with several states’ requests. On July 17, 1984, the Minimum Legal Drinking Age Act was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, which created “a minimum legal drinking age of 21 for the purchase or public possession of any alcoholic beverage” (Liebschutz 43). For states that would choose not to adopt this policy, the United States government pledged to reduce their annual federal highway funding. In an important decision made by President Ronald Reagan, who proclaimed he was “persuaded by the evidence that raising the drinking age could save lives,” which still holds true today (Toomey). Little did President Reagan and Congress know that one of their bills would go on to serve as a major platform for debates over underage drinking in our country.

Before an individual can pick a side in this debate over the minimum legal drinking age, he or she must first briefly be informed with the truths about teenage drinking behavior and its association with driving. To start off, the United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that about 900 lives are saved every year because of the implementation of the current MLDA Act (Voas). It is not appalling that motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among teens and that alcohol is involved in quite a bit of these accidents. In his piece “Age of Drinking Onset and Unintentional Injury Involvement After Drinking,” author Ralph W. Hingson describes a survey taken where “Respondents who began drinking at younger ages were much more likely than those who did not start drinking until they were 21 years old or older to report heavy drinking both in the year prior to the survey and during the period of heaviest drinking” (Hingson 1529). 

We live in a country where citizens receive their licenses to drive at the age of either sixteen or seventeen. A lower minimum legal drinking age of eighteen years old would allow students who are still in high school to drink legally, with only one or two years of driving practice under their belts. It does not take a high intelligence level to understand that alcohol and driving do not mix; toss in this combination with someone who recently received their license and the country would just be asking for disaster. In the text College Drinking and Drug Use, the authors include a graph from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism which portrays alcohol-related traffic fatality rates from 1982 to 2004. This graph, measured in fatalities per 100,000 persons, shows a consistent decline over the years, from about 1.1 million deaths in 1982 to just under 600,000 deaths in 2004 (White and Rabiner 280). The current minimum legal drinking age has steadily proven to save lives each year, and with persistent concern about new drivers on the road, the possible consequences related to driving under the influence appear to outweigh any sort of benefit for being able to drink at a younger age. 

Not only should there be concern over an increase in possible teenage drinking and driving, but a lower minimum legal drinking age would cause major apprehension regarding the public health and future consequences for our nation’s youth. Alcohol is the most widely abused substance among America’s youth, more than cigarettes and marijuana. In addition, the consumption of alcohol is associated with illicit drug use, academic failure, and higher tobacco use (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). There is a clear relationship between how early people begin to consume alcohol and how prone these individuals are to develop problems later in life. Not only can people become dependent on alcohol in their later years, but alcohol is directly related to depression and stress which both greatly attribute to suicide (Carpenter and Dobkin 147). If the minimum legal drinking were to be lowered to eighteen years old, there would be a very dangerous trickle-down effect on the youth in this country. 

The concept around this trickle-down effect is primarily based upon a new portion of the underage population being exposed to harmful practices. For example, nearly one-third of the United States’ population begin drinking before the age of thirteen (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). Situationally based upon this trend, if the drinking age were lowered to eighteen, which is three years younger than twenty-one, would the youth of our country begin drinking at around ten years old? Just to give this scenario some perspective, the average ten-year-old is in fifth grade. As a moral citizen of the United States, how would you feel knowing that approximately one-third of fifth graders have already consumed alcohol? Not only would this be a dreadful problem to deal with within our borders, but think about how the United States would be perceived by other countries. The trickle-down effect means that all the problems that are already present in our country would only begin and affect those at a younger age. The younger people begin to experiment with alcohol, the more likely it is that they develop health issues down the road. It is absolutely terrifying to imagine how corrupt our society would begin to look just by tweaking the age of a law by three years.

In the United States, we live in a culture where youth feel that underage drinking is accepted, acceptable, or even expected. People have these preconceived notions going into high school and college that “I must drink to look cool.” In America, drinking is seen as a sport; people drink with the intention to get drunk and become impaired by its effects. Almost every time there is a celebration of some sorts, this is used as an excuse for drinking. The usage of alcohol is much different in the United States compared to other counties overseas. In European countries, which are often compared to the United States when it comes to the legal drinking age, drinking is done as a leisure activity and in a much more organized fashion. Many Europeans enjoy having a drink with each meal as opposed to an American resident consuming several drinks along with their dinner. In countries such as Italy, Spain, and France, alcohol is an element of their culture and everyday life. In these countries, it is simply less common for people to binge drink at the rate that citizens in the United States do.

Some proponents for lowering the minimum legal drinking age to eighteen argue that the drinking age is lower in other countries and they seem to be operating just fine. Despite the clear discrepancies between the drinking tendencies in the US and other countries, however, there have also been several studies that indicate how lower drinking ages internationally have not always proven beneficial to its respective country. For example, the Callaghan, Sanches, and Gatley study aimed to analyze the effectiveness of Canada’s minimum legal drinking age law. This study was important because it documented a country whose provinces or ‘states’ set drinking ages at either eighteen or nineteen, the presumed age the United States would adopt. Not only did the data collected show an increase in traffic injuries, but also documented “significant increases in suicides, alcohol poisonings and alcohol use disorders and, for men, injuries from varying sources such as falls”(Voas). The increase in availability of alcohol to a recently defined underage population not only increased automobile accidents but had a wide array of effects on Canadian teenagers. In addition, there was a review published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs on the time when New Zealand experimented with their legal drinking age. In 1999, the country lowered its minimum legal drinking age from twenty years old to eighteen, and studies exposed a “spike in alcohol-related car crashes and increased drinking there among still-underage 16-and 17-year-olds” (Singh). Not only were there an increase in traffic incidents once again, but there is also proof of the trickle-down effect and how it affected those belonging to the even younger population of citizens there. 

Furthermore, alcohol consumption plays a very large role in the social aspect of both high school and college students. Alcohol is the most widely experiment drug among college students and the atmosphere in which students choose to engage in illegal acts can play a pivotal role in their academic performance. On average, about 30,000 college students must receive medical treatment each year to cope with alcohol poisoning (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). Not only do underage students run the risk of being caught with possession and consumption of alcohol, but the consequences from their decisions can go a long way. Alcohol can cause alterations in the structure and function of the development of the brain, which continues to mature into an individual’s early twenties. Pairing alcohol with other types of drugs can lead to the deterioration of some parts of the brain, which can attribute to academic failure (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). Consuming alcohol while in college has become mainstream in the culture that we live in. One is now almost expected to partake in activities revolving alcohol to meet the expectations of the typical college student. Instead of waiting for the federal government to take a stand, perhaps ordinary civilians could culminate to solve drinking problems on college campuses nationwide. In her podcast “Colleges Brainstorm Ways To Cut Back On Binge Drinking”, NPR news correspondent Jennifer Ludden suggests for universities to increase the number of “Friday morning classes to discourage Thursday night drinking”(Ludden). Another option to help curb the drinking problem is to implement a greater amount of off campus police patrol. Regardless of the ideas, there are ways to help solve the issue at hand without taking such as drastic step as to simply make it legal for eighteen-year-old college student to drink alcohol. 

Unhealthy and even dangerous drinking tendencies are also very prevalent in high school students as well. High school is a time where students don’t have the same burden of responsibility as college students have, as they still live at home with their parents and have a great deal of leisure time available. Andrew Plunk is an assistant professor of pediatrics at Eastern Virginia Medical School and the lead author of a study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. The results from Plunk’s study not only reaffirm the fact that a lower drinking age can lead to “lower educational attainment, higher substance abuse” but also in the few years following the MLDA Act of 1984, states with a lower minimum legal drinking age saw higher high school dropout rates. Plunk explains how "We saw a 3% increase in dropout rates in the whole sample...  In already at-risk groups [of dropping out of high school] like blacks and Hispanics, we saw a 4% increase" (Basu). Putting this into perspective for today’s high school students, this would correlate to approximately 99,000 dropouts before graduation.

Some people argue that teenagers under the age of twenty-one are already drinking, so the government should just make it legal. Possible reasoning for this point of view could include less pressure on college students, in regards to using a fake I.D. to purchase alcohol. However, although some students under the age of twenty-one choose to drink alcohol, lowering the legal drinking age is clearly not the answer. The trickle-down effect mentioned earlier would result in a greater portion of the new underage population being interested in engaging with alcohol. Maybe instead of binge drinking beginning in high school it will start as early as middle school. The earlier exposure to alcohol among today’s youth will only harm them in their future. They will be more inclined to drink alcohol throughout high school and college, they could become less attentive to their schoolwork, and possibly develop health problems that could plague them for the rest of their lives. Others argue that if one is old enough to vote in the general election, he or she should be old enough to drink alcohol. While there is a history with the minimum legal drinking age and the legal age to vote, this claim is nonetheless invalid. In the United States, the government provides its citizens certain rights or privileges at different ages, some of which include being able to join the military at the age of eighteen, running for the Senate at the age of thirty, or even running for the Presidency at the age of thirty-five. Different rights have different ages of initiation, and one cannot plainly compare two right of his or her choosing with one other. 

Unquestionably, lowering the minimum legal drinking age in the United States to eighteen years old would be adverse for a society striving to better itself in comparison to other great nations abroad. A lower drinking age would engender an increase in traffic incidents due to a greater risk of drunk driving, garner frightening attention over public health and safety, and bring about a trickle-down effect that would lay the groundwork for major setbacks of today’s youth. I understand that underage drinking in the United States is a sizeable problem that doesn’t have one straightforward answer, but campaigning for the federal government to take an action of such magnitude is not the right move either. We are only given one life in this world and are encouraged to make the most of it. A human life is the most precious and quintessential aspect of our existence, something that cannot be given but can easily be taken away. Why should the government pass a law that legally provides people three additional years to slowly begin shortening their lives?
