The Issue of Teen Drinking - Essay Example

?Teen Drinking We live in a century where teenagers are maturing far faster than their previous counterparts due to the influence of the new media ontheir way of thinking and actions. It is important to understand that these teens have a far more adult outlook regarding their lives due to their life experiences, duties, and responsibilities. However, our society has not caught up with the evolution of the teenager. They are still viewed as members of our society who need to be constantly policed and told what to do and when. This is the situation that applies to the drinking laws in relation to American teenagers. The rest of the world though, have come to acknowledge that it is better to recognize that teenagers will drink alcohol due to exterior influences and, therefore, society must learn to adapt and ensure that they drink responsibly instead. That is the focus of the T.R. Reid essay “Let My Children Drink”, while Joseph Califano Jr. chooses to oppose the view of Reid in his own essay titled “Don't Make Teen Drinking Easier”. Although I see the point of Mr. Califano, I must agree with the benefits as described in Mr. Reid's essay. That is because teenage drinking does happen and it cannot be ignored. The three points that I will be raising in this paper are that: 1. Teenagers who know their parents trust them to drink responsibly make for more mature adults. 2. Anything done illegally is more likely to draw teenagers to try the activity and go overboard in the process. Teens will also commit crimes regardless of being drunk or not. 3. Lowering the drinking age will make teenagers mature faster in terms of personal responsibility and logical thinking. The worst age that a human being can be stuck in would have to be the wild, wonderful, and sometimes wacky teenage years. It is during this time in a teenagers life that he learns to experiment and differentiate for ourselves what, as adults, shall be the right and wrong actions for him. This is the time when releasing the parental restraints slowly reaps its benefits most specially in terms of teenage drinking. As Mr. Reid put it so effectively in his essay (Reid): As a wandering Post correspondent, I have raised teenagers in three places: Tokyo, London and Colorado. No parent will be surprised to read that high school and college students had easy access to alcohol in all three places. In all three countries, kids sometimes got drunk. But overseas, they did their drinking at a bar, a concert or a party. There were adults -- and, often, police -- around to supervise. As a result, most teenagers learned to use alcohol socially and responsibly. And they didn't have to hide it from their parents. By allowing teenagers to drink in a supervised situation, they are forced to take responsibility for their actions stemming from alcohol consumption. The presence of adults and other persons of authority is a clear indication to them that they will be allowed to have fun but not go overboard about it. This is the kind of situation that directly appeals to teenagers. It is obvious that the lower drinking age works for the teens mentioned in Reid's article because they are given full responsibility for their actions. You choose to drink, you take responsibility for whatever happens if you get drunk. End of story. That is the kind of maturing life lesson that teenagers so badly need in their lives. It is probably a stand that, if presented to most underage teenagers in America today, they would gladly agree to in order to prove that they can actually be as responsible as their adult counterparts if not more. However, Mr. Califano strongly disagrees with Mr. Reid simply because he is overprotective and unable to trust that a teenager, when given the freedom to choose, will choose to do the right thing. His data that explains that (Califano); “British fifteen and sixteen year olds were more than twice as likely as Americans to binge drink (50% vs. 24%) and to have been intoxicated within the past thirty days (48% vs. 21%).” What he failed to mention is that because these teens drank under adult supervision, they managed to avoid the normal pitfalls of underage drinking such as brawls, traffic accidents, and the like. All while American teens who indulge in illegal and underage drinking cause the very problems that supervised drinking avoids. He also claims that these teenagers will sometimes be led to commit crimes such as rape, homicide, or suicide. One can find that line of reasoning a bit laughable mainly because any teenager who has tendencies to commit the aforementioned crimes will do it regardless of whether he is drunk or not. The most important factor that one must consider while reading these two essays is the fact that only one writer clearly sees the actual benefits of supervised underage drinking or lowering the drinking age. The fact is that drinking alcohol becomes a responsibility for the teenager. He is solely responsible for his actions and, therefore, has to face the consequences that come with irresponsible drinking. He does not have the same excuse as an American teenager who would simply say “This just happened because you did not trust me to drink!” At the end of the debate, the reality is that there is a teenager standing on the verge of adulthood and drinking alcohol is part of that rite of passage. The job of the parent is to make sure that the teenager transitions safely into adulthood and the first step towards that is making sure that they learn to drink responsibly and make the right decisions when it comes to choices that are available when drinking. Allow them to drink in a supervised atmosphere. That way, the novelty of getting drunk will wear off early result in a more mature thinking teenager and highly responsible adult. Works Cited Califano, Joseph Jr. “Don't Make Teen Drinking Easier “. Google Docs. 11 May 2003. Web. 02 Jul. 2012. Reid, T.R. “Let My Teenager Drink”. Washington Post. 4 May 2003. Web. 02 Jul. 2012. Read More