Let Teenagers Drink - Essay Example

A number of authors, scholars, and commentators in the recent past have made comments and/or written articles and opinions with regards to the issue of the legal age, in which people are allowed to drink alcohol. These commentaries have mostly been concerned with the lowering of the legally allowed age for alcohol consumption from 21 years to 18 years. One prominent commentator is Washington Post reporter T. R. Reid, who in his article, “Let My Teenager Drink”, advocates for the lowering of the drinking age to 18 years. Reid argues that the current legal drinking age pushes teenagers to drink in an uncontrolled, unsupervised environment and as a result, do so excessively, which is dangerous (Reid). This, he argues would be different if the drinking age would have been lowered to 18yrs. I tend to agree with Reid, especially on the fact that many American teenagers under 21 years are consuming alcohol, excessively, in the uncontrolled, unsupervised environment; however, I also disagree with his assertion that lowering the drinking age will make teens drink responsibly and excessively; these are habits that have nothing to do with the legally set drinking age.

Richard Killin basically agrees with the assertion by Reid and argues further that teen/underage drinking is a major contributor to most problems faced by the youth since it is uncontrolled and as such teens fake ID’s, go to dangerous places, and at times, deal with dangerous people in the quest of having access to alcohol.  Basically, Richard is entertaining the suggestion of lowering drinking since he alleges that many college and university heads wish to propose it, arguing that “lowering teen drinking may reduce the intensity of alcohol consumption in colleges”.