Why Should the Government Reduce the Legal Drinking Age - Essay Example

The proposing side argues that the age should be reduced to 18 years (Sidlow, 2012). This is due to the fact that at the age of 18 teenagers are legal citizens who can go to war, marry, and perform other adult staffs. They argue that maintaining the legal age of drinking at 21 years on enticing the youths below that age to abuse alcohol since they take as much as they can when they get the chance (Eaton DK, Kann L, Kinchen SA, et al, 2012).The opposing side of this debate has indicated that in past research carried out by the University of Michigan proved that if the government wanted to reduce the consumption of alcohol, they should increase the age limit.

This reduced the consumption of alcohol amongst the seniors by 13.3% (Johnston, O’Malley, Bachman and Schulenberg, 2011). They also noted that there was a drop of 58% of alcohol-related to motor accidents, this information is from secondary data from books, and handwritten manuscripts. It is to their argument that reducing the age will increase the consumption of alcohol and make the youth addicts at a very young age.