Legal Drinking Age

In 1984, the United States’ Congress passed The 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act. The act prohibits persons under the age of twenty-one from purchasing and publicly possessing alcoholic beverages. Since the act was passed, legal drinking age has become a largely controversial topic in the United States, especially among high school and college students. The legal drinking age of the United States needs to remain twenty-one, and not be lowered to the age of eighteen.

Congress passed this act mainly to minimize motor vehicle accidents caused by drunk driving. Previously, the minimum drinking age had been eighteen in many states. By the age of eighteen, most American teenagers have been driving for two years or longer. The drinking age was set at twenty-one to teach teens the importance of driving soberly.

The minimum drinking age should not be lowered, due to medical reasons. It has been scientifically proven that alcohol is detrimental to teens’ brain development. Not only does alcohol negatively affect teens in behavioral ways, it changes the way they develop. If a young teen begins to drink alcohol before the age of twenty or twenty-one it will negatively influence his or her health for the rest of his or her life.

Personally I think that instead of lowering the drinking age to eighteen, the government should raise the "adult" age. What I mean by this is that a person should have to be twenty-one to buy cigarettes and tobacco, go to war, vote, etc. A big argument is that if eighteen year olds are considered adults legally, then why can't they drink alcohol legally. I think a better solution is to make the age of responsibility twenty-one.