Is penalties harsh enough on underage drinking and should parents be held accountable - Research Paper Example

This paper intends to discuss whether penalties applied to underage drinking are harsh enough, or in other words, should drinking be allowed for underage people, and should parents be held accountable for underage drinking. If we compare the drinking age in United States to that in other countries around the globe, we come to know that there are stricter laws in US about legal age for drinking. Most of the other western countries regard it as a normal social activity performed by an individual of any age.

In European countries, and in England, children start taking alcohol, although a small quantity, with their parents. Wine is often a casual part of meal. Australia allows drinking at eighteen and England allows it at sixteen, and the teens consuming alcohol at so young an age are found to be perfectly healthy. This makes it easy to argue that a lower drinking age should be acceptable when the rest of the world is okay with it. Thinking this way, one feels that there are harsh penalties by the government on underage drinking. . It is easy to teach a young kid of 18, as compared to an elder person, and make him learn how much of it is okay and how much is harmful.

Parents in Europe teach their kids how to be responsible with drinking and then they set them free to try it out, but responsibly. In US, parents are so much fearful of the worse consequences and threats posed by heavy alcoholism that they inculcate this fear inside their children that the act is totally wrong and they cannot think about drinking before they reach a set age by the law. This concludes that there is no need for harsh penalties on underage drinking, but there is need to create more awareness on health hazards in case of binge drinking.

Learning and knowledge can do what penalties cannot. There is another dark side regarding penalties. Harsh penalties increase the thirst. It is very natural for man to crave for something he has been forbidden. He wants to do things and try them out when they are told not to. This is because of his experimental nature that compels him to crave for something he cannot get. Adam ate the forbidden fruit because he had been specially told not to eat it. Similarly, alcohol becomes the tempting forbidden fruit for teens.

Strictly forbidding kids to touch alcohol increases the curiosity inside them and then they turn out breaking the laws and standing liable for penalties. Studies have suggested that most teens drink out of their excitement that they get in breaking the law. “87% of high school seniors have used alcohol” (Harold). Hence, it is clear that a lot of high schoolers and teens do consume alcohol. Then what are the laws for? Medical science and psychological studies reveal that teens