Monday, April 14, 2008

Legal Drinking Age

Do you think that the legal drinking age should be reduced to age 18? Why or why not? Are people too immature to begin drinking at this age? If so, why do you think this? What are the advantages and disadvantages of lowering the drinking age?

Jessica Ebeling (1:00)

44 comments:

Anonymous said...

I dont think that they should move the drinking age to 18 because there have been scientific evidence that shows that the brain is still developing and alochol will only tamper with the development of the brain. I think people are really immature when it comes to drinking. They are dumb, they seem to lose control alot of times in situations that could be easily avoided.

English student said...

I think that the legal drinking age should get reduce to 19. The reason why it shouldn't be 18, is because you would have alot more deaths if you were to legalize drinking at the age of 18. The legal age to drink is 21, and each year about 5,000 people under 21 die because of consuming achohol. If you were to reduce the age to 18, there would be alot more deaths due to teenagers drinking.In Champaign, You only have to be 19 to get into bars, so why cant you drink at that age of 19. Liquor stores and bars would profit more if legal age drinking were reduce to 18,but there would be alot of young adults receiving DUI, if that were to happen.

Anonymous said...

My takes on the drinking age should stay the same. I think some 18 year old aren't mature enough to know when they've reached their limit. If the drinking age is lowered, I think many 18 year olds as well as younger teens will take advantage of it. Even today, I've even heard stories of 21 year olds buying alcohol for their younger friends or family members. I think the reason why many young teens take advantage of drinking is because they may feel that once they have reached a certain age it's okay to drink and they feel like their adults now. The last thing anyone needs it more car accidents because of drunk drivers at a young age and their immaturity .

Anonymous said...

I think that the legal age should be reduced to 18. There are always going to be immature people and let's face it, nobody waits till they are 21 to drink-so making it less of a deal,might reduce the popularity of it. What could be improved upon are severe punishments for those who drink and drive. The USA has one of the worst DUI driving accident rates in the developed world while having lower to mid-range rates of alcohol consumption.So that being said-severe punishments for those who drink and drive is key.

English student said...

My problem with lowering the drinking age to 18 is that it would create an even younger age of starting to drink. Sure some people start drinking pretty young but it seems like the average of people start when they are around 17 or 18. If we make it legal to drink at the age of 18 then more kids the age of 14,15,16 would start drinking. When your 21 i dought you hang out with many people under the age of 18 so you probably wouldnt be buying them alcohol. Give the legal purchase of alcohol to 18 year olds and i think you will see a lot younger kids begin to drink because of who the 18 year olds hang out with.

English student said...

Nicole Osby
I think that the drinking age should stay at 21. We have a lot of grown ups who cant handle there liquior. And reducing the age limit would only make society worse. Its bad enough that the younger teens or still getting there hands on the liquior, so just imagine if they could by it there self. Your talking about more violents, and people being killed. Not ever one knows that when to stop when they have reached their limit.

Anonymous said...

Absolutely not, I dont believe that 18 is a mature enough age. Drinking is something that is meant for a mature person. Some 21 yr olds are not even mature enough to handle alchohol because they are not able to take the responsibilities that come along with it. There are no advantages to lowering the drinking law but some disadvantages would be more drinking and driving deaths, less focus on what needs to be done rather then just fun and play, and it may cause younger children to drink at a younger age and alcohol will become more accesible to them.

English student said...

i dont in todays world the law of 21 stops anyone from drinking. from my personal expericens even 13 year old can get hold of alcohol. i dont think we can chage anything by changing drinking age. it will not stop anyone who is under the age of 21 drinking. there are many countries out there who does even have drinking age and they have lot less alchol related accidents. advantage of lowering age is basically business will make lot more money and we will have lot less alchol related accidents. disdvantage is basically most of the teeenages will be drinking and driving.

ashish patel

English student said...

I don't think the drinking age should be lowered. I think people are far too irresponsible when they drink, especially teenagers. There would be so many more drunk drivers on the roads, and there are already too many out there. I think a lot of teenagers might say they want the drinking age to be lowered but if they really thought about how it would affect everything, they would change their minds. I mean i would like the drinking age the be lowered simply because of convenience, however, i don't think it would be a good change. I think the disadvantages would weigh out the advantages of lowering the drinking age.

Anonymous said...

When you turn 18 you are considerede a legal adult. You can go to war, pay taxes, sereve on a jury, buy tobacco products, and get married. You can do all these things but not drink alcahol legally. I understand that you are still developing as a person at 18, but I feel if you can do all these other things then drinking alcahol legally should not be illegal.
There are good arguments for keeping the legal age at 18. The brain is continuing to grow at this age. Yes this is true, but your brain can continue to grow as long as your living if you continue to read and discover new materials so this argument is not a great one. There is also the statists with drunk drving and how many teenagers do it. This is another good point, but teenagers still get into the most automobile accidents wheither they are drinking or not. Teen drivers represent only 7% of the liscened drivers but account for 40% of all reported auto accidents. It may be a better idea to raise the legal driving age then keeping the drinking age at 21.
My last argument for changing the drinking age to 18 is the lack of trust we as a nation have in 18 year old people, and the whole mentality young people have about drinking . We say it's fine to do alomst anything else except drink when other respected nations like France, Germany, Italy, Spain, China, and many others have a drinking age of 18 or younger. Since we consider ourselves one of the smartest and brightest nations in the world it seems we do not feel that way about young adults dealing with alcahol. I believe the problem with young adults drinking alcahol has less to do with the age, and more to do with the perception people associate with drinking. It is never cool to just sit and have a beer or glass of wine with your meal when your young. Everyone wants to just get destroyed and take 10 shots and drink a case of beer by themselves. This is why the drinking age is as high as it is in this country and until the mentality about drinking is changed for young adults it is going to be a major issue.

English student said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
English student said...

Nope i think the drinking age is just fine at 21. people for the most part are to young to be drinking at age 18, there just not responsible enough yet. i think its total crap that we can go fight for the country and 18 but can drink a beer legaly. mabey somthing should be done about that. if it was legal to drink that much younger i do think there would be more deaths cause by alcohol because of drinking to much and car accidents. id say an advantage to lower the drinking age is that liquor stores and the bars would make more money from people drinking so young and also the city would make more money from accidents and driving tickets.

Ryan Brown

Anonymous said...

I think that if it is reduced it should be reduced to 19 instead of 18. By making the legal drinking age 19, high school students are not able to legally drink, which will save a lot of teenage lives that would be lost if the drinking age was 18. At 19, people are typically in college and drinking anyways on a regular basis. College students are freshmen or sophomores and usually dont do the driving that a junior or a senior would. There is also a major disadvantage in lowering the drinking age to 19 because there will be more deaths among young adults who drink and drive or make other poor choices.

Anonymous said...

I think the legal drinking age should be 21, people are to immature to start drinking at 18. Also you need to consider that people need to be out of high school before they can drink for there safety. 21 has been the legal age for a long time so it should remain so.

English student said...

I dont think it should be at all because of the lack of maturity at the age of eighteen where they dont realize as much that drinking is not a game and can be dangerous. Not saying that some 21 year olds arent immature but if the age 18 became the drinking age i think it would be more accidents and more deaths from drinking and driving.
Justin Peacock

English student said...

No, I do not think the drinking age should be lowered to 18 years old. In doing this, it would increase the amount of drinking in high school drastically. This is because there are many high school students who turn 18 during their senior year, thus giving them the opportunity to buy alcohol for themselves and all of their underaged, high school friends. Being 21, your body has fully matured one is more likely to make smarter decisions in regards to drinking. If the age were lowered, sells would obviously increase by a very large amount, but so would the death toll. Many more teens would die due to the access they had in retrieving alcohol.
Jason Brown

English student said...

I definately do not think the drinking age should be reduced to 18 because I do not think they are mature enough to be able to have a drink. They have only been able to drive for two years or under and giving them a right to drink would not mix very well. I believe there would be many more accidents then there are now. Kids that are 18 and younger drink now, not legally, but they still find a way. But allowing them to buy alcohol from stores and going in bars would be a mess. When your 18 your still young, growing, and learning. I know that everyone drinks at a young age because I was one of those young kids. They were trying to get a law where kids couldn't get there license till they were 18 so that means they will just be learning to drive and being able to drink legally too. Keeping the age at 21 would be the right thing to do.
Jennifer Woodward (12:00)

Anonymous said...

I don't think the drinking age should be lowered to 18. I believe you should spend a few years out of high school seeing what the real world is about before taking on the responsibility of drinking. I know several people that when it became legal to drink, they were driving home drunk or well on the way to being drunk most weekends. It became the thing to do with their drinking buddies, it was all they looked forword to, which in my opinion is not how most people should live at this young age. If they lower the drinking age, I think it will cause even more problems with DUIs, leading to more innocent deaths, because when your 18, you have enough to think about already.

Anonymous said...

No, I don't think the legal drinking age should be lowered to 18. This is because at 18 you look forward to being an adult, buying cigerettes, and doing other things that teens wernt able to do. When you turn 19 you look forward to going to the bars and when you are turning 21 you look forward to legallky buying alcohol. So i think the time span between 18 and 21 is the time a person matures and learns lessons for when they can legally drink.

English student said...

I believe that the drinking age should remain the same. i think that keeping it a 21 gives people time to grow and become more mature. At the age 18 people have so much going on in their lives such as graduation, moving out, college,partying and so much more. i think that would only make things worse. i also heard that at the age 21 is when your body can handle the alcohol better because it is developed more.

Twila Douglas

English student said...

The legal drinking age is just fine as it is. For the most part, you spend your senior year of highschool being 18. Graduating and going to college gives you time to grow up and get used to the real world and how life really is. The maturity level just isn't there at 18. There are already people that age drinking as it is, and lowering the legal drinking age to 18 might cause even younger kids to start drinking, which can only cause more and more problems.

Lesley Suding (9:00)

Anonymous said...

I do not think that the legal drinking age should be reduced to 18 but I think it should be reduced to 20. 21 seems like a weird age and there's not really a difference between only one year. I think that some 18 yr olds are mature and responsible enough to drink and do anyway. However, most 18 yr olds are not mature and responsible enough to drink. I'm glad that the age is not reduced because there are already too many young people driving drunk and doing other irresponsible acts while under the influence. I do see where some think that it makes sense to lower the drinking age. You can go and die for your country but you can't drink a beer with your country. I think that's because the government knows that they are immature and they need someone to fight for ur country.

English student said...

If you’re in the military the legal drinking age should be 18, but if not the drinking age should be 21. 18 year old make very poor choices, and maybe 3 years of maturity would make you wiser. 18 teen year olds in the military are can fight and die of America, but they can have a drink I can’t justify this. Have you ever been in campus town over the weekend? If you have you know that most of the kids can’t hole there liquor and they are running around like fools. Can you try to image if every high school was the same way? It would be a horrible think. Either way I don’t think that drinking age will change, there are groups that will not allow this to happen. One of these groups is MADD.

From Steve Gratkins (9:00 a.m.)

Anonymous said...

I do not think the drinking age should be reduced at all. This is a big contraversial topic and has been for quite some time now. I know there are many teenagers out there drinking already and by reducing the legal drinking age, there would be even younger kids drinking.
Also if for some reason, the drinking age got lowered to 18, then more and more high school students would show up to school drunk and hung over because they "couldn't" control themselves. This action would show great lack of responsibility and care on the drunk students part. By lowering the drinking age, the education system would begin to dwindle away even faster than ever. It would cause students to lose interest in school because they may think that they have found the "solution" to their problems, Alcohol. Alcohol is not the answer and will not help a person to achieve any goals they may have for themselves and it will increase the number of Americans in debt. This would be because, once they lose interest in school then they would'nt want to further their education at all in order to be successful in life. I'm not saying that everyone would be like this, but there's a great possibility that many would.
Maybe I'm wrong about this, but today it seems like students and teenagers in my community have turned to alcohol and drugs for everything.

English student said...

If you would of asked me this question a year ago I would of definitely told you that the drinking age should be lowered. But since I turned 21 it doesn't seem that THAT big of a deal. I know that if the drinking age stayed at 21 kids would still get their hands on alcohol at 18, 19 and 20 either way. I think that it is wrong that at 18 you are able to vote, go to war and be tried as an adult in court but not be able to drink. Your brain is going to grow at 18 whether you drink or not so that shouldn't be a factor. The only thing that would hold me back from dropping the drinking age to 18 is the maturity level. But either way people under 21 are going to get their hands on alcohol one way or another. I believe it should be lowered to 19 because I don't know if 18 would be the right age.

Justin Stout 1:00

English student said...

I do think the legal drinking age should be reduced to 18 years old. I believe if people can go over seas and fight for this country at the age of 18 years old that they should be able to drink. It makes sense to me that if a person of 18 years old can enlist to go to war and handle a gun then they can be able to drink. It's really not much of a difference I believe. The advantages to this is there would be less arrest because in fact most underage drinking does happened between the ages from 17-20. The disadvantages from this is this would maybe cause younger teens to get a hold of alcohol more easily. I mean nobody I know waits until their 21 to drink so it wouldn't change much.

Cesar (9:00)

Anonymous said...

Yes, I do think that the drinking age should be lowered to 18 years because if we can sign up to be in the military and give our lives for our country, we should be trusted with making a decision such as drinking. If we are officially "adults" at the age of 18, then we should be able to make adult decisions at that age, such as drink, join the military, smoke, etc. and not be considered as immature. The advantages of lowering the legal age would be that people wouldn't abuse alcohol so much when they do turn 21, they would have a chance to learn how to drink responsibly at an earlier age, and they would be treated more as adults and be able to interact with other adults in adult settings. The disadvantages would be that some people would abuse their priveleges at an earlier age, drinking and driving might be more prevalent, and buying alcohols for minors in high school would be a lot more common.

Anonymous said...

No I dont think that the drinking age should be reduced. I think there are already to many accidents related to drunk drivers. We dont need to create more by giving people who are barely adults the right to drink. But then again, it might stop some of the accidents, if kids arent worried about whether the are going to get in trouble for underage drinking they may be more likely to stay at home, or at their friends houses instead of driving around causing more problems.

English student said...

Although it would have made my senior year a lot more fun. I do not think the drinking age should be lowered to 18. When you turn 18 you are usually still in high school and not really that mature, so it would be really stupid to allow immature people to legally drink.

Kristine D'Urso (12:00)

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