Should the drinking age of 21 be lowered to 18years old Why or Why not - Personal Statement Example

Should the drinking age of 21 be lowered to 18years old? Why or Why not? The issue regarding the age at which drinking should be allowed has been a hot topic of debate since ages. In United Sates, at present, one should be twenty one years of age to get allowed to buy and consume alcohol. This paper is going to argue that it is necessary to set the drinking age to 21, and so, it should not be lowered to 18. Teenagers are so immature that they can easily get indulged in binge drinking which is very disastrous for health.

Heavy consumption of alcohol for the purpose of getting intoxicated is, in modern terms, called binge drinking. Adolescent brains are much more defenseless than adult brains to stand the ill effects of alcoholism. Consumption of alcohol at a young age badly affects learning, memory, thinking capacity, judgment, and decision-making capability. Grant (1998, p.144) states that the age at which a person starts consuming alcohol plays a very important role in deciding how much alcohol dependent he will be in his later life.

He investigated the relationship between life time alcohol dependence and the age at which a person starts drinking. He used data from the 1992 National Longitudinal Alcohol Epidemiologic Survey. He found in his research that “regardless of the family history of alcoholism, respondents with an earlier age of drinking onset were more likely to become alcohol dependent compared with respondents with a later age of drinking onset” (p.144) and that “the likelihood of lifetime alcohol dependence decreased with increasing age at drinking onset” (p.146). Young brains are more vulnerable to hazards of alcohol.

Hence, it is very important not to lower down the drinking age to 18 in order to reduce the hazardous effects of alcohol when consumed at younger age. ReferencesGrant, B.F. (1998). The impact of a family history of alcoholism on the relationship between age at onset of alcohol use and DSM–IV alcohol dependence. Alcohol Health and Research World, 22(2), pp. 144-148.