thesis statement about lowering the drinking age

The Thesis Statement in a Persuasive Text

Alys Avalos-Rivera

In another chapter, we discussed the features of an informational essay. In this chapter, we will guide you to understand the essential elements of a similar type of academic text: the persuasive essay. Although informational and persuasive writing follow similar principles such as an orderly presentation of ideas that should be supported with evidence (e.g. facts, arguments, or examples), their purposes differ. The objective is written to take a stance (specific point of view) with respect to a controversial topic and persuade the audience to adopt the writer’s position. Because of this difference, the thesis statement of the persuasive essay needs to introduce the writer’s position in the controversy featured in the essay. Also, the preview of the essay’s structure should outline the arguments that the author will use to support his/her stance.

Should the US drinking age be lowered?

In the US, drinking alcoholic beverages is illegal for people under 21 years of age (minimum legal drinking age or MLDA). This law has long caused a great deal of disagreement and debates. While some people think it is paradoxical that young people of 18 cannot enter a bar but still go to war, others believe that the law is the best way to keep youth away from irresponsible and heavy drinking episodes (also called binge drinking). The following texts were written by readers of the New York Times” Room for Debate page to express their opinions about the subject. [1]

• Read the comments and underline the readers’ main arguments (reasons to support one position or the other).
• Identify which readers are against lowering the minimum drinking age (CON) and which are in favor (PRO)?
• Which arguments seem the least convincing? Which are the most persuasive? Why?

Content focus: Rating thesis statements

Considering these features, in the following task you will analyze how six college students drafted their thesis statements for a persuasive essay on the MLDA controversy. In the prompt used by the instructor for this assignment, students were required to address the following purposes:

• Present the PROs and CONs of the MLDA to a group of college students’ parents.
• Persuade the parents to vote in favor of lowering the MLDA to 18 years of age.

In other words, the writers need to take a stance on the issue. Read the Thesis Statement and assess how well each one fulfills the purposes given above and to what extent. Rate the Thesis Statement using a scale from 1 to 6, where 6 will stand for the best Thesis Statement and 1 will be given to the poorest. Be prepared to explain the reasons you have to support your rating.

a. The United States has more accidents caused by drivers under the influence of alcohol than other countries where there is no MLDA (        )

b. Young people should be allowed to drink without legal restrictions based on their age, which is ridiculous (        )

c. Parents should teach their children how to drink alcohol in moderation.  (        )

d. Lowering the MLDA will allow parents to introduce their children to alcohol use under the supervision and reduce the rate of accidents caused by drunken drivers (        )

e. A reduction in the MLDA will help neutralize teenagers’ obsession with drinking, allow parents to monitor their children first encounters with alcohol, and reduce the rate of accidents caused by irresponsible drinking.   (        )

f. Having the MLDA fixed at 21 is only increasing young people’s fascination with drinking in unsafe environments and using false IDs.     (        )

Guidelines for a thesis statement

What should be considered when drafting a thesis statement for an essay that aims to persuade the audience to take a stand in a controversial issue? Think of some possible guidelines to write an effective persuasive TS taking into account the following:

• How should you address your audience?
• Where in your text should you introduce your stance?
• What language features (words, phrases) could be useful?
• How can you connect your TS with the main arguments you will use in your essay?

Write your guidelines below and discuss them with your colleagues and your instructor:

In some of the thesis statements listed above, the writers use modal verbs such as will and should . The first one ( will ) is used to predict the results that could be achieved if the authorities follow a specific course of action regarding the MLDA. The second one ( should ) is used to recommend what should be done with respect to the MLDA. These and other modal verbs that express advice, convey an obligation, or predict an outcome are often used to introduce the writer’s stance because they are useful to express the speaker’s desires, or his/her ideas of how the world should be. Other modal verbs that are also used with these purposes are: must, can, could, ought to, and also the semi-modal have to .

When using modal verbs to compose your thesis statement, however, you should be careful to select the one that best represents your purpose. The meaning of your thesis statement can change a great deal if you use one or the other. Read the following examples and explain how the meaning has changed with each modal (in bold):

*Although ought to and must are accepted as standard forms, they are not used in Academic English very often because they imply a strong and categorical position. Scientists usually abstain from categorical statements because these expressions do not convey that the writer remains open to new possibilities. Scientist prefer to maintain a more open attitude in their writing in case new evidence is discovered in the future that can change their points of view about the world.

Although the participants in the Room for Debate’s and Star Wars pages hold different points of view regarding very different topics, they all engaged in their online discussions with a common purpose: persuading their audience of their point of view. They do so in a succinct fashion because their audience does not usually invest much time in reading blog posts that are too long and complex. Therefore, effective blog/forum posters try to be direct and present one single point per post. On the contrary, academic persuasive writing needs to be more detailed and provide the audience with more than just the author’s point of view.

• https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/02/10/you-must-be-21-to-drink ↵

The Thesis Statement in a Persuasive Text Copyright © 2020 by Alys Avalos-Rivera is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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One of the first associations that come to mind when talking about alcohol is driving. For citizens of the United States, having a car is seen as a must starting from the age when a teenager is allowed to receive a driving license. According to data provided by the organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving , in 2010, a high percentage of car accidents connected to drunk driving (15.1% out of 10.228 individuals) was observed among young people aged between 18-20 years (PolicyMic). Respectively, if youths were officially allowed to consume alcohol from 18 years old, this index of car accidents would necessarily be much higher. Moreover, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration claims that since establishing the drinking age of 21 in 1975, the number of car fatalities among 18-20 year old drivers in the United States decreased by 13% (SFGate).

The medical irresponsibility of allowing teenagers to drink alcohol on a legal basis is also obvious to those who have at least a basic knowledge in biology. Consuming alcohol on a regular basis can negatively affect the development of an individual’s brain’s frontal lobes, which are responsible for emotional regulation, as well as for planning and organization (ProCon.org). Underage individuals who consume alcohol put themselves at more risk of addiction, decreased ability of decision-making, tend to behave less responsibly, and may become violent, depressed, and even prone to suicide.

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The “trickle-down effect,” well-known to sociologists, is another reason against lowering drinking age that should be taken into consideration. This effect implies individuals who already have a right to legally purchase and consume alcohol tend to buy it for their younger peers (ProCon.org); for example, 21-year-old students buy beer or spirits for themselves and for their friends who can be of the age 18-20. In the case of the drinking age being lowered to 18 years, the age of individuals who in fact have access to alcohol will decrease even more, reaching ages of 15-17 or even less. Considering the specifics of adolescence, granting teenagers with a wider access to alcohol can have negative consequences for their health and wellbeing.

Though in a number of countries worldwide the drinking age is 18 years, in the United States, this index is 21, and it should not be lowered. Lowering the drinking age to 18 years old would lead to an increase of car accidents connected to drunk driving; it would also negatively affect youths’ cognitive development, clouding their ability to make decisions and plans, and would make them more vulnerable to addiction and other negative effects; due to the “trickle-down effect” lowering the drinking age would also mean granting access to alcohol to individuals who are younger than 18 years old. It seems this debate in the U.S. will linger on much longer.

“Minimum Age Limits Worldwide.” ICAP.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Jan. 2014. <http://www.icap.org/table/minimumagelimitsworldwide>.

“Top 3 Reasons Why the Drinking Age Should Not Be Lowered to 18.” PolicyMic. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Jan. 2014. <http://www.policymic.com/articles/14574/top-3-reasons-why-the-drinking-age-should-not-be-lowered-to-18>.

“Keep the Drinking Age at 21.” SFGate. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Jan. 2014. <http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Keep-the-drinking-age-at-21-3271409.php>.

“Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered from 21 to a Younger Age?” ProCon.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Jan. 2014. <http://drinkingage.procon.org/>.

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Why the drinking age should be lowered

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Alcohol Research and Health History

Why the drinking age should be lowered: an opinion based upon research.

Engs, Ruth C. (1997, 2014). “Why the drinking age should be lowered: An opinion based upon research. Indiana University: Bloomington, IN. Adapted from: IUScholarWorks Repository:  http://hdl.handle.net/2022/17594

The legal drinking age should be lowered to about 18 or 19 and young adults allowed to drink in controlled environments such as restaurants, taverns, pubs and official school and university functions. In these situations responsible drinking could be taught through role modeling and educational programs. Mature and sensible drinking behavior would be expected. This opinion is based upon research that I have been involved in for over thirty years concerning college age youth and the history of drinking in the United States and other cultures.

Although the legal purchase age is 21 years of age, a majority of college students under this age consume alcohol but in an irresponsible manner. This is because drinking by these youth is seen as an enticing "forbidden fruit," a "badge of rebellion against authority" and a symbol of "adulthood." As a nation we have tried prohibition legislation twice in the past for controlling irresponsible drinking problems. This was during National Prohibition in the 1920s and state prohibition during the 1850s. These laws were finally repealed because they were unenforceable and because the backlash towards them caused other social problems. Today we are repeating history and making the same mistakes that occurred in the past. Prohibition did not work then and prohibition for young people under the age of 21 is not working now.

The flaunting of the current laws is readily seen among university students. Those under the age of 21 are more likely to be heavy -- sometimes called "binge" -- drinkers (consuming over 5 drinks at least once a week). For example, 22% of all students under 21 compared to 18% over 21 years of age are heavy drinkers. Among drinkers only, 32% of under-age compared to 24% of legal age are heavy drinkers.

Research from the early 1980s until the present has shown a continuous decrease, and then leveling off, in drinking and driving related variables which has parallel the nation's, and also university students, decrease in per capita consumption. However, these declines started in 1980 before the national 1987 law which mandated states to have 21 year old alcohol purchase laws.

The decrease in drinking and driving problems are the result of many factors and not just the rise in purchase age or the decreased per capita consumption. These include: education concerning drunk driving, designated driver programs, increased seat belt and air bag usage, safer automobiles, lower speed limits, free taxi services from drinking establishments, etc.

While there has been a decrease in per capita consumption and motor vehicle crashes, unfortunately, during this same time period there was an INCREASE in other problems related to heavy and irresponsible drinking among college age youth. Most of these reported behaviors showed little change until AFTER the 21 year old law in 1987. For example from 1982 until 1987 about 46% of students reported "vomiting after drinking." This jumped to over 50% after the law change. Significant increase were also found for other variables: "cutting class after drinking" jumped from 9% to almost 12%; "missing class because of hangover" went from 26% to 28%; "getting lower grade because of drinking" rose from 5% to 7%; and "been in a fight after drinking" increased from 12% to 17%. All of these behaviors are indices of irresponsible drinking. This increase in abusive drinking behavior is due to "underground drinking" outside of adult supervision in student rooms, houses, and apartments where same age individuals congregate. The irresponsible behavior is exhibited because of lack of knowledge of responsible drinking behaviors, reactance motivation (rebellion against the law), or student sub-culture norms.

Beginning in the first decade of the 21st century, distilled spirits [hard liquor] began to be the beverage of choice rather than beer among collegians. Previously beer had been the beverage of choice among students. A 2013 study of nursing students, for example, revealed that they consumed an average of 4.3 shots of liquor compared to 2.6 glasses of beer on a weekly basis.

This change in beverage choice along with irresponsible drinking patterns among young collegians has led to increased incidences of alcohol toxicity - in some cases leading to death from alcohol poisoning. However, the percent of students who consume alcohol or are heavy or binge drinkers has been relatively stable for the past 30 years.

Based upon the fact that our current prohibition laws are not working, the need for alternative approaches from the experience of other, and more ancient cultures, who do not have these problems need to be tried. Groups such as Italians, Greeks, Chinese and Jews, who have few drinking related problems, tend to share some common characteristics. Alcohol is neither seen as a poison or a magic potent, there is little or no social pressure to drink, irresponsible behavior is never tolerated, young people learn at home from their parents and from other adults how to handle alcohol in a responsible manner, there is societal consensus on what constitutes responsible drinking. Because the 21 year old drinking age law is not working, and is counterproductive, it behooves us as a nation to change our current prohibition law and to teach responsible drinking techniques for those who chose to consume alcoholic beverages.

Research articles that support this opinion are found in the Indiana University Repository at: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/17133/browse?type=title

and https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/17130/browse?type=title

Some material here also used in: Engs, Ruth C. "Should the drinking age be lowered to 18 or 19." In Karen Scrivo, "Drinking on Campus," CQ Researcher 8 (March 20,1998):257.

Alcohol Research and Health History resources

(c) Copyright, 1975-2024. Ruth C. Engs, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405

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Example Of The Us Drinking Age Argumentative Essay

Type of paper: Argumentative Essay

Topic: Law , Hazard , Trauma , Alcohol , Criminal Justice , Democracy , Alcoholism , Disabilities

Words: 1250

Published: 12/23/2019

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The Prohibition era of the United States, where the consumption and sale of all alcohol was firmly prohibited by the American government and punishable by law, was one of the most volatile eras in its history. Bootleggers and speakeasies made the criminal underworld thrive in America until, due to this activity and the unpopular nature of the law, Prohibition was repealed in 1933. Since then, the minimum drinking age was put into practice to make sure that no one below a certain age was allowed to drink, a declaration that has changed dramatically over time. However, there have been questions as to whether or not the legal drinking age should be lowered from 21 to 18. There is precedent in the history of the legal drinking age, and the debate rages over whether or not it keeps people safe, or whether it just arbitrarily limits the freedoms of individuals who can do more dangerous things legally already.

The drinking age has not always been set at 21; there are many states that have their own provisos and provisions regarding a lower drinking age. Post-Prohibition, following the 1933 repeal of the Amendment, most states decided on a minimum drinking age of 21. Colorado, however, still had no drinking age, and only set it at 18 in the year 1945. In Illinois, while men had to be 21 to drink, women only had to be 18 years old to drink. Idaho allowed you to be 20 and still drink beer, but liquor retained the 21-year stipulation. New York, North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia (for beer and wine) and others all had a minimum drinking age of 18, and still others had minimums set at 19 (Miron and Tetelbaum, 2007).

In 1971, the 26th Amendment of the Constitution was passed, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18; this also had an effect on minimum drinking ages, as a lot of states equated the right to vote with the right to drink. Many states lowered their drinking age minimums in the early 70s; all states but Arkansas, California, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming lowered their drinking ages to between the ages of 18 and 20, depending on the state (Cultice, p. 172).

There are those who believe in the lower drinking age; consuming alcohol is considered to be a socially acceptable practice, and many people claim that 18 year olds should be allowed to drink alcohol since they are already allowed to do more dangerous things - like join the military or drive a motor vehicle. Lowering the drinking age, it is argued, will more strictly regulate the consumption and sale of alcohol, and permit underage drinkers to have a legal means of obtaining alcohol. This would free up law enforcement resources allocated to enforcing these higher legal drinking ages, and they would keep underage drinkers from seeking out dangerous alternative options for obtaining alcohol.

Despite the varying degrees to which states determined their minimum drinking ages, this all changed with the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, which stated that all states would set their minimum drinking ages to 21. This was enforced by lowering the federal highway apportionment of each state that did not follow through by ten percent. This amendment came about from the study of drunk driving accidents started by Ronald Reagan's commission and Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). The phenomenon of drunk driving is the major reasoning behind those who seek to have the drinking age minimums remain at 21 - studies have shown that a high legal drinking age lowers the prevalence of fatal injuries among adolescents (Jones et al., p. 112). There is also a spillover effect, as a lower drinking age would permit 18 year olds to grant 15-16 year olds access to alcohol, leading to even higher fatal injuries. The more experience with alcohol one has, the lower the likelihood is to have a fatal injury, suggesting that the higher drinking age leads to fewer injuries.

Since the NMDA of 1984, there has been tremendous opposition to the setting of the minimum drinking age to 21. Studies have indicated that binge drinking most often occurs in those under 21, perhaps due to the illegal and taboo nature of underage drinking that is established by the rule. Difficulty in enforcing the 21 age minimums and the subjective unfairness of the bill has led some, including New York assembly members, to push forward bills that would set a drinking age back at 18. These individuals and organizations argue that the 21-year-old drinking age does not do anything to solve dangerous college drinking binges, and only serves to make them worse (Engs, 2003).

Even now, there are states that still do not abide by the Minimum Drinking Age Law. Louisiana, for example, still has its minimum age set at 18, though this mostly applies only to certain exceptions. Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, both US territories, have 18 year drinking ages. There is sufficient precedent to suggest that these states have been doing just fine with an 18 year old drinking age, and that the rest of the country should follow suit. Those who wish to lower the LDA seem to suggest that teen drinking continues unabated regardless of the illegality of it, but it moves to less controllable areas. This increases the likelihood of injury (Jones et al., 1992), and promotes even more risky behavior along with drinking, since the threshold of rebellion and illegality has already been crossed. It is also said that it should not be the purview of government to regulate certain age limits for certain activities, as 18 year olds are already permitted to do very dangerous things - in most states, that age is considered the "age of majority," meaning that they have all of the responsibilities inherent to adulthood. Continuing said regulation into years beyond the age of majority is confusing and unnecessary for many who oppose the drinking age limit.

In conclusion, the legal drinking age limit is a huge controversy for many. Some believe that it should remain at 21, because it will limit the access youths have to alcohol, and will cut down on the number of car accidents and fatal injuries among adolescents. However, there are others who believe alcohol consumption falls into the age of majority, and that this particular liberty should not be infringed upon; they also feel as though lowering the drinking age would bring regulation to an already existing problem of youth drinking. The debate has no clear answer, but each side has their unique advantages and talking points.

Works Cited

Cultice, Wendell W. Youth’s Battle for the Ballot: A History of Voting Age in America. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992. Engs, Ruth. "Drinking Practices and Patterns Among Collegians", November 2003. Jones, Nancy E., Pieper, Carl F., and Robertson, Leon S. "The Effect of Legal Drinking Age on Fatal Injuries of Adolescents and Young Adults." American Journal of Public Health vol. 82, no. 1, pp. 112-115. January 1992. Print. Miron, Jeffrey A., and Elina Tetelbaum. "Does the Minimum Drinking Age Save Lives?" Nber.org. 2007-07-12.

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Volume 42 Issue 1 13 January 2022

Age, Period, and Cohort Effects in Alcohol Use in the United States in the 20th and 21st Centuries: Implications for the Coming Decades

Part of the Topic Series: NIAAA 50th Anniversary Festschrift

Katherine M. Keyes

Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York

This article is part of a Festschrift commemorating the 50th anniversary of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Established in 1970, first as part of the National Institute of Mental Health and later as an independent institute of the National Institutes of Health, NIAAA today is the world’s largest funding agency for alcohol research. In addition to its own intramural research program, NIAAA supports the entire spectrum of innovative basic, translational, and clinical research to advance the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of alcohol use disorder and alcohol-related problems. To celebrate the anniversary, NIAAA hosted a 2-day symposium, “Alcohol Across the Lifespan: 50 Years of Evidence-Based Diagnosis, Prevention, and Treatment Research,” devoted to key topics within the field of alcohol research. This article is based on Dr. Keyes’ presentation at the event. NIAAA Director George F. Koob, Ph.D., serves as editor of the Festschrift.

Introduction

Alcohol consumption, including any alcohol use; patterns of high-risk use, including binge drinking; and alcohol use disorder (AUD) incidence and prevalence, differs substantially over time and by life stage. Variation also occurs across demographic groups, and such differences themselves vary across time and place. In the first quarter of the 21st century, changes in incidence and prevalence of alcohol use and alcohol-related health consequences have been accelerating. Understanding the magnitude and direction of these changes informs hypotheses regarding the reasons underlying alcohol consumption changes across time and development, including both long-term historical changes as well as abrupt shifts. It also permits determining the optimal focus of research and targets of services. Such surveillance is informed by science and statistical considerations of variation by age, period, and cohort effects.

Age-, period-, and cohort-effect estimation has proved to be an extraordinarily useful framework for organizing and interpreting data, uncovering patterns, and identifying causes of trends in incidence and prevalence of many health conditions and mortality over time. This article provides an overview of the conceptual basis of such effects as related to alcohol consumption, and reviews recent studies of age-period-cohort variation, especially regarding gender, social class, and specific beverage and drinking patterns.

Age, Period, and Cohort Effects and Their Importance

Age effects.

Age effects refer to the effects of a person’s age on their health. They may be caused by the accumulation of exposure or social experiences; critical and sensitive developmental windows; or immunological periods of vulnerability, such as infancy and end of life. Extensive evidence documents that alcohol use is most likely to begin during adolescence or young adulthood, peak during the transition to adulthood, and generally decrease thereafter. 1,2 However, these age patterns are not static; in the United States, for example, the onset and peak of alcohol use has been shifting in recent decades to a later point in development. 3 Because onset and persistence of alcohol use are in part social phenomena and are amenable to policy interventions (e.g., changes in minimum legal drinking age laws), 4 the specific structure and magnitude of age effects are historically variable. However, the general patterns of onset early in adult maturation, and desistence during adulthood, have been largely stable over historical time.

Period Effects

Period effects refer to changes in outcome that affect all individuals alive in a particular period—that is, a year or set of years. Reasons for period effects include changing environmental or social factors that affect incidence and persistence of certain behaviors or disorders, policy or law changes, or other environmental conditions that affect health. For alcohol use, numerous factors have been associated with substantial changes in consumption patterns, including major policy initiatives to restrict access to alcohol, such as U.S. Prohibition from 1920 to 1933, and broad economic factors, such as booms and recessions that affect spending on nonessential goods. The general social climate for heavy drinking has also changed over time as advocacy movements placed the dangers of heavy consumption into stark focus, followed by policies to increase criminal sanctions on impaired driving. 5 However, as detailed below, such policy changes are not simply period effects because they often impact age groups differently; therefore, their effects may manifest as cohort effects.

Cohort Effects

Against the backdrop of age and period effects, cohort effects have also proven to be powerfully predictive of a range of health behavior, including alcohol use. Cohort effects can perhaps be most efficiently conceptualized as age-by-period interactions. 6 For example, a cohort effect would be apparent if historical change across time in a health behavior such as alcohol consumption resulted in increasing overall prevalence (i.e., a period effect), but the increase in prevalence is faster or slower for people in different age groups (i.e., an age by period interaction). Cohort effects can also be conceptualized as a unique rate of an outcome for individuals depending on birth year. 7

Before reviewing the current literature on cohort effects in alcohol use, it is important to understand that cohort effects are powerfully predictive of many health outcomes, and critical to consider when evaluating trends. There are numerous historical examples of particular birth cohorts with increased rates of disease outcomes and mortality in the United States, including all-cause mortality, 8,9 tuberculosis, 10 peptic ulcer, 11 lung cancer, 12 and other diseases. More recently, the strong influence of generational cohort effects is apparent in the leading U.S. contributors to premature mortality, including obesity, hepatitis C, drug overdose, and suicide. 13–16 Similarly, numerous studies in recent decades have found that alcohol use and health outcomes related to heavy consumption cluster by birth cohort, as well as have exhibited age and period effects at various points in history. Cohort effects have long been documented in substance use, 17,18 including alcohol use and alcohol-related harms, 19 as described in more detail below.

Recent Alcohol Use Time Trends in the United States

Time trends in alcohol use and alcohol-related harms have been dynamic in the United States, especially over the last 2 decades. Among adolescents, the prevalence of alcohol use has declined. Data from two major nationally representative surveys—Monitoring the Future and the National Survey on Drug Use and Health—converge in demonstrating these reductions. Although the specific prevalence of any alcohol use and binge drinking differs between the two surveys, both document substantial, sustained reductions in adolescent drinking over the last 20 years. 20,21 The most recently published data from the Monitoring the Future Study, depicted in Figure 1, show the trend in past 2-week binge drinking among 12th grade adolescents through 2019; as the figure shows, binge drinking declined from a peak in approximately 1982 to less than 20% for both boys and girls in 2019. 22

In contrast, adult alcohol use and binge drinking has been increasing. A meta-analysis of six national surveys of alcohol use found (Figure 2) that from 2000 to 2016, the overall prevalence of binge drinking increased approximately 7.5% per decade across the 2 decades analyzed. 23 Importantly, however, these increases were primarily concentrated among women, as discussed further below.

The observation that changes over time in alcohol consumption differed by age immediately raises the possibility of cohort effects. Indeed, many studies using different data sources and analytical approaches have documented cohort effects for numerous alcohol-related outcomes. Generally, post-World War II U.S. birth cohorts had higher rates of consumption than earlier cohorts, 19,24 ,25 driving much of the increase in consumption in the 1970s and 1980s. For many of these studies, however, reliance on retrospective recall is a common limitation. Avoiding this limitation, Kerr et al. 24 , 26 used the National Alcohol Surveys, which reports current consumption patterns that are less subject to recall issues. These analyses documented that several birth cohorts had higher risks of alcohol consumption and binge drinking throughout the life course, especially men born in the late 1970s and women born in the early 1980s. In contrast, among cohorts born in the 1990s and later, alcohol use has consistently been declining during adolescence and early adulthood. However, those same cohorts have exhibited accelerating drinking after transition to adulthood. 27

In sum, the cohorts of today’s adults who are now in their 30s and 40s were part of the historical shift toward declining alcohol consumption in adolescence. This decline is explained in part by shifts in the minimum legal drinking age across states, especially in the 1980s, 27 yet declines continued thereafter, potentially aided by focused prevention efforts on reducing underage drinking. However, because drinking then accelerated during the transition to adulthood, adult rates of drinking did not benefit from these prevention efforts. Indeed, Patrick et al. (2019) have documented an overarching historical shift in the age effect on binge drinking among recently born cohorts; thus, the peak age of binge drinking in 1996 to 2004 was 2 years later than it was in 1976 to 1985. 3

In addition to these overall age, period, and cohort effects, additional variation across other levels of dynamic change have implications for prevention, policy, and causal etiology assessments. Three areas of variation that have received substantial attention are gender, socioeconomic status, and beverage type.

Effects of Gender

Men consume more alcohol and are more likely to have AUD compared with women, 1 but the gender gap has been closing for decades in the United States and elsewhere. 19,25 However, the manner in which the gender gap is closing differs by birth cohort. Among today’s birth cohorts of adolescents (i.e., those born in and around the same year), the gender gap is closing because for more than 30 years, alcohol consumption and binge drinking have declined among both boys and girls, but the decline is faster for boys than girls (see Figure 1). 28 Conversely, in adults, alcohol consumption and binge drinking have increased, especially in the past 10 years, and those increases have been greater for women than for men (see Figure 2). 23 The recent increases in drinking among women reflect the high-risk cohorts identified by Kerr et al. 26 as they age into middle-adulthood. Interestingly, compared to earlier generations, these cohorts of women progressed through adolescence with lower alcohol use and binge drinking, yet had a faster acceleration of their drinking during the transition to adulthood, resulting in high levels of alcohol use and strong cohort effects in adulthood. 27

Additional analyses have indicated that the increases in alcohol consumption and binge drinking among women in midlife are concentrated among those with high levels of education, 29 occupational prestige, 30 and income, 29 suggesting that traditional gender norms sanctioning alcohol consumption are shifting among women now occupying traditionally male statuses and spaces. The human costs of these increases in consumption are reflected in alcohol-related mortality rates. These rates have doubled between 1999 and 2016, 31 with the largest increases observed among women and adults emerging into midlife, consistent with alcohol consumption trends.

Effects of Socioeconomic Status

Historically, the role of socioeconomic status has been a critical axis for examining trends over time in alcohol consumption, as exemplified by the higher consumption rates in adult women, who are increasingly occupying high socioeconomic positions. Overall, individuals with a higher socioeconomic status are less likely to fully abstain from alcohol compared to those with a lower status. 32 The relationship between socioeconomic status and binge drinking or AUD, however, is more mixed and depends on the socioeconomic indicator, population, and time period analyzed. 33–35 Further, population distributions of socioeconomic status are an outcome of economic conditions (i.e., income and wealth are functions of times of economic expansions and recessions); therefore, trends in socioeconomic status, and who achieves and maintains high status positions, are important potential drivers of population trends.

Renewed attention to theories of the relationship between social class and health has been prompted by evidence that recent increases in U.S. mortality, including alcohol-related and other substance-related mortality, are concentrated among men with less than a high school education. 36 However, these findings run counter to available data on heavy drinking birth cohorts. The birth cohorts identified by Case and Deaton 36 are different than the birth cohorts emerging into adulthood in the 1970s and 1980s or those of college age in 2002 to 2012, suggesting that the dynamics of alcohol-related harm are likely to substantially change in the decades to come. Indeed, National Alcohol Survey data show that cohort trends in U.S. alcohol consumption are primarily driven by changes in education. 37 As more recent cohorts have entered college at higher rates, drinking and binge drinking have become concentrated in these college-attending young adults. The alcohol consumption cohort effect of those born in the late 1970s and early 1980s is attributable largely to their high rates of college attendance. Conversely, however, there may be signs of emerging socioeconomic differences when considered across gender (more on gendered trends in alcohol consumption below). For example, from 2002 to 2012, binge drinking was largely stable among college-attending young adults, but slightly increased among non-college enrolled women (from 29% to 33%) while decreasing among non-college-enrolled men. 38 Continued surveillance of the role of socioeconomic status within trends in alcohol consumption, and beyond education into other indicators, is warranted.

Effects of Beverage Type

Another important area for research is variation in alcohol consumption dynamics by type of alcoholic beverage. Although all alcoholic beverages are carcinogenic, beverage types vary in ethanol concentration and potential for harm, as well as in their prevalence and popularity across demographic groups. A growing literature indicates that the types of alcoholic beverages that individuals in the United States are consuming are dynamic and may depend on cohort. Kerr et al. (2004) 39 found that pre-1940s cohorts preferred spirits throughout the life course compared with later cohorts. In contrast, cohorts born in the 1940s through 1970s, especially men, tended to prefer beer, and wine has been gaining dominance in beverage preferences among younger cohorts. These changes may be related at least in part to marketing and sales efforts by the alcohol industry to increase profits. For example, the increase in wine consumption, which has been observed in alcohol sales surveillance, 40 is commensurate with the increases in income and education in the United States, as wine is marketed as a prestige product and is often sold at high price points. Additional analyses have found that the alcohol content of beverages is increasing in the United States, 41 ,42 portending potential further harm and greater rates of AUD.

The dynamics of cohort effects on beverage preferences are particularly salient for the role of alcohol policy and reduction of alcohol-related harms. Sales restrictions and alcohol taxes have a substantial, demonstrable overall impact on population-level consumption and alcohol-related harms, 43 although this varies to some extent by age of consumer, level of consumption, and beverage type. 44 For example, tax variations by beverage type can influence trends in the consumption of particular beverages. Spirit and wine consumption is typically most sensitive to price and tax policy changes, 45 and although consumption of spirits has been increasing in the United States in recent years, there has been little change in tax and price regulations. This suggests that one driver of the increase in spirits consumption is that they are becoming effectively less expensive over time. Beer and wine are also regulated differently in many states; thus, changing dynamics in the popularity of each beverage have implications for how effective beverage-specific alcohol taxes are in reducing sales and, consequently, harm. Regulations related to alcohol sales and consumption that can respond to market changes in beverage preferences (e.g., increased taxes on wine and spirits that reflect their growing share of the alcohol market) may be an important lever for promoting public health in the coming decades.

Differences in Drinking Patterns Among Cohorts

Taken together, the literature on age, period, and cohort effects in alcohol research indicates that different cohorts have different drinking patterns and that socioeconomic and demographic factors are critical to contextualizing the observed trends. Although it is possible to document time and cohort trends with the available data, understanding why alcohol consumption patterns are changing is more challenging.

Certainly, alcohol policies play a fundamental role in determining population-level patterns of consumption, and the way that policies target particular demographic groups (intentionally or unintentionally) creates opportunities for cohort effects to emerge. For example, the adoption of a minimum legal drinking age of 21 across states throughout the 1980s mediates a portion of the decline in alcohol consumption among U.S. adolescents since then. 27 However, consumption has continued to decline for decades after the increase in drinking age, suggesting that additional factors, such as the public health investment in underage drinking prevention, provided further benefits. Numerous other policies have shifted and impacted population-level alcohol consumption since the U.S. Prohibition, including restrictions on where and when alcohol can be sold, state monopolies on sales, criminal penalties for hazardous use, and others. 46,47 These policies likely have affected different age groups in different ways, depending on their developmental stage when exposed to newly restrictive or permissive alcohol policies.

Of course, alcohol policies are not the only determinant of alcohol consumption and, consequently, of age, period, and cohort effects. Substantial research has evaluated the impact of social norms and social roles, as well as community and societal norms and values on changes in alcohol use over time. 48,49 Social values have an inherent role in the use of alcohol, and the acceptability of drinking and drunkenness within and across social groups at different times and different life stages is potentially a powerful factor influencing population-level consumption. For example, heavy consumption on college campuses, especially within social institutions such as Greek life, 50 is often normative and expected, but norms and values around alcohol use swiftly change as young adults encounter the social norms of early adulthood. 51 Moreover, these normative trajectories and patterns become variable as societal roles and values themselves change. For example, religious attendance and the importance of religion have long been a robust predictor of decreased alcohol consumption. 52 However, the centrality of religion to U.S. adolescents and adults has been declining for more than a decade, 53 and this decline explains a portion of the cohort effects in binge drinking among today’s adults. 54 Monitoring these and other broader societal changes is critical to determining the influences that mediate shifts in alcohol consumption over time.

For example, the coming years will be critical to determining the effects of health knowledge regarding alcohol-related risks on population consumption. For decades, low levels of alcohol consumption were considered protective, especially for cardiovascular health. 55 The evidence supporting this hypothesis, however, was subject to substantial confounding, 56 and dissemination of the message of alcohol’s protective effects was well-funded by the alcohol industry, which had a clear financial incentive. 55 Recently, studies using large administrative databases and quasi-experimental designs, such as Mendelian randomization, have called into question and refuted the idea that a moderate level of alcohol consumption benefits health. 57,58 The extent to which public health messages shift to reflect this change in scientific consensus may be important in reducing population-level alcohol-related harms. These changes may further manifest as cohort effects, as the dissemination and implementation of health information and guidelines are likely to affect age groups differently as they progress through the life course.

Conclusions

Alcohol consumption continues to be a leading contributor to morbidity and mortality, both in the United States and worldwide. Although significant progress in reducing adolescent and young adult alcohol use has been achieved and sustained for decades, it is offset by increases in drinking during the transition to adulthood. The cohorts currently at midlife, especially women, are increasing alcohol consumption and binge drinking at greater levels than other cohorts, portending health consequences that may persist for decades. Understanding the motivations for consumption, destigmatizing the use of services to reduce consumption, and increasing the availability and accessibility of such services are necessary to improve population health. Moreover, age, period, and cohort effect estimations are critical surveillance tools for epidemiology and population health research. Such assessments have already answered critical questions and uncovered patterns in the data that specifically identify high-risk groups requiring prevention and intervention efforts.

Acknowledgments

Dr. Keyes would like to thank Dr. Deborah Hasin for insightful feedback and edits on this paper. This article was supported by National Institutes of Health grant R01AA026861.

Correspondence

Address correspondence concerning this article to Katherine M. Keyes, Ph.D., Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health, 722 West 168th Street, Room 724, New York, NY 10032. Email: [email protected]

Disclosures

The author declares no competing financial or nonfinancial interests.

Publisher's note

This article was based on a presentation by Dr. Keyes at the NIAAA 50th Anniversary Science Symposium, “Alcohol Across the Lifespan: 50 Years of Evidence-Based Diagnosis, Prevention, and Treatment Research,” held on November 30–December 1, 2020. Links to the videocast are available on the NIAAA 50th Anniversary Science Symposium agenda webpage. Opinions expressed in contributed articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the NIAAA, National Institutes of Health. The U.S. government does not endorse or favor any specific commercial product or commodity. Any trade or proprietary names appearing in Alcohol Research: Current Reviews are used only because they are considered essential in the context of the studies reported herein.

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Why Are Older Americans Drinking So Much?

The pandemic played a role in increased consumption, but alcohol use among people 65 and older was climbing even before 2020.

By Paula Span

The phone awakened Doug Nordman at 3 a.m. A surgeon was calling from a hospital in Grand Junction, Colo., where Mr. Nordman’s father had arrived at the emergency room, incoherent and in pain, and then lost consciousness.

At first, the staff had thought he was suffering a heart attack, but a CT scan found that part of his small intestine had been perforated. A surgical team repaired the hole, saving his life, but the surgeon had some questions.

“Was your father an alcoholic?” he asked. The doctors had found Dean Nordman malnourished, his peritoneal cavity “awash with alcohol.”

The younger Mr. Nordman, a military personal finance author living in Oahu, Hawaii, explained that his 77-year-old dad had long been a classic social drinker: a Scotch and water with his wife before dinner, which got topped off during dinner, then another after dinner, and perhaps a nightcap.

Having three to four drinks daily exceeds current dietary guidelines , which define moderate consumption as two drinks a day for men and one for women, or less. But “that was the normal drinking culture of the time,” said Doug Nordman, now 63.

At the time of his 2011 hospitalization, though, Dean Nordman, a retired electrical engineer, was widowed, living alone and developing symptoms of dementia. He got lost while driving, struggled with household chores and complained of a “slipping memory.”

He had waved off his two sons’ offers of help, saying he was fine. During that hospitalization, however, Doug Nordman found hardly any food in his father’s apartment. Worse, reviewing his father’s credit card statements, “I saw recurring charges from the Liquor Barn and realized he was drinking a pint of Scotch a day,” he said.

Public health officials are increasingly alarmed by older Americans’ drinking. The annual number of alcohol-related deaths from 2020 through 2021 exceeded 178,000, according to recently released data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention : more deaths than from all drug overdoses combined.

An analysis by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism shows that people over 65 accounted for 38 percent of that total. From 1999 to 2020, the 237 percent increase in alcohol-related deaths among those over age 55 was higher than for any age group except 25- to 34-year-olds.

Americans largely fail to recognize the hazards of alcohol, said George Koob, the director of the institute. “Alcohol is a social lubricant when used within the guidelines, but I don’t think they realize that as the dose increases it becomes a toxin,” he said. “And the older population is even less likely to recognize that.”

The growing number of older people accounts for much of the increase in deaths, Dr. Koob said. An aging population foreshadows a continuing surge that has health care providers and elder advocates worried, even if older people’s drinking behavior doesn’t change.

But it has been changing . The proportions of people over 65 who report using alcohol in the past year (about 56 percent) and the past month (about 43 percent) are lower than for all other groups of adults. But older drinkers are markedly more likely to do it frequently, on 20 or more days a month, than younger ones.

Moreover, a 2018 meta-analysis found that binge drinking (defined as four or more drinks on a single occasion for women, five or more for men) had climbed nearly 40 percent among older Americans over the past 10 to 15 years.

What’s going on here?

The pandemic has clearly played a role. The C.D.C. reported that deaths attributable directly to alcohol use, emergency room visits associated with alcohol, and alcohol sales per capita all rose from 2019 to 2020, as Covid arrived and restrictions took hold.

“A lot of stressors impacted us: the isolation, the worries about getting sick,” Dr. Koob said. “They point to people drinking more to cope with that stress.”

Researchers also cite a cohort effect. Compared to those before and after them, “the boomers are a substance-using generation,” said Keith Humphreys, a psychologist and addiction researcher at Stanford. And they’re not abandoning their youthful behavior, he said.

Studies show a narrowing gender divide, too. “Women have been the drivers of change in this age group,” Dr. Humphreys said.

From 1997 to 2014, drinking rose an average of 0.7 percent a year for men over 60, while their binge drinking remained stable. Among older women, drinking climbed by 1.6 percent annually, with binge drinking up 3.7 percent.

“Contrary to stereotypes, upper-middle-class, educated people have higher rates of drinking,” Dr. Humphreys explained. In recent decades, as women grew more educated, they entered workplaces where drinking was normative; they also had more disposable income. “The women retiring now are more likely to drink than their mothers and grandmothers,” he said.

Yet alcohol use packs a greater wallop for older people, especially for women, who become intoxicated more quickly than men because they’re smaller and have fewer of the gut enzymes that metabolize alcohol.

Seniors may argue that they are merely drinking the way they always have, but “equivalent amounts of alcohol have much more disastrous consequences for older adults,” whose bodies cannot process it as quickly, said Dr. David Oslin, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Philadelphia.

“It causes slower thinking, slower reaction time and less cognitive capacity when you’re older,” he said, ticking off the risks.

Long associated with liver diseases, alcohol also “exacerbates cardiovascular disease, renal disease and, if you’ve been drinking for many years, there’s an increase in certain kinds of cancers,” he said. Drinking contributes to falls, a major cause of injury as people age, and disrupts sleep.

Older adults also take a lot of prescription drugs, and alcohol interacts with a long list of them. These interactions can be particularly common with pain medications and sleep aids like benzodiazepines, sometimes causing over-sedation. In other cases, alcohol can reduce a drug’s effectiveness.

Dr. Oslin cautions that, while many prescription bottles carry labels that warn against using those drugs with alcohol, patients may shrug that off, explaining that they take their pills in the morning and don’t drink until evening.

“Those medications are in your system all day long, so when you drink, there’s still that interaction,” he tells them.

One proposal for combating alcohol misuse among older people is to raise the federal tax on alcohol, for the first time in decades. “Alcohol consumption is price-sensitive, and it’s pretty cheap right now relative to income,” Dr. Humphreys said.

Resisting industry lobbying and making alcohol more expensive, the way higher taxes have made cigarettes more expensive, could reduce use.

So could eliminating barriers to treatment. Treatments for excessive alcohol use, including psychotherapy and medications, are no less effective for older patients , Dr. Oslin said. In fact, “age is actually the best predictor of a positive response,” he said, adding that “treatment doesn’t necessarily mean you have to become abstinent. We work with people to moderate their drinking.”

But the 2008 federal law requiring health insurers to provide parity — meaning the same coverage for mental health, including substance use disorders, as for other medical conditions — doesn’t apply to Medicare. Several policy and advocacy groups are working to eliminate such disparities.

Dean Nordman never sought treatment for his drinking, but after his emergency surgery, his sons moved him into a nursing home, where antidepressants and a lack of access to alcohol improved his mood and his sociability. He died in the facility’s memory care unit in 2017.

Doug, whom his father had introduced to beer at 13, had been a heavy drinker himself, he said, “to the point of blackout” as a college student, and a social drinker thereafter.

But as he watched his father decline, “I realized this was ridiculous,” he recalled. Alcohol can exacerbate the progression of cognitive decline, and he had a family history.

He has remained sober since that pre-dawn phone call 13 years ago.

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Thesis statement for lowering the drinking age to 18

• Uncategorized
• 18 Sep, 2015

In the United States at age 18, a person is legally allowed to buy tobacco, vote, get married, enlist in the military, and work in a bar, among other privileges. However, in most states, he cannot legally drink champagne at his own wedding or have a beer with his fellow comrades. 18 is the age of adulthood in the United States, and adults should.

Sample Thesis Paper A young boy was driving very precariously. So much so that he had a brutal accident in which his car rolled over nearly half a dozen times until it finally landed upside down on the side of the road. A passing motorist stops and after having dragged the driver out from the wreckage, asks him, Why in God’s name were you driving.

Nonsense! Clearly the drinking age should be lowered to 18. If a person is old enough to vote, and has the mental capacity to decide who should make the country s. The legal drinking age is the age at which a person can consume or purchase alcoholic beverages. These laws cover a wide range of issues and behaviours, addressing. This is a tough.

As we are all aware of, the United States of America has ruled that the legal drinking age is twenty-one. Many citizens, including myself, believe this to be preposterous. We all have our reasons for believing which side of the line is best, and this essay includes mine. I know that some of you may believe that twenty-one is a suitable and.

Drinking Age Lowering Drinking Age: A Crucial Decision? Thesis statement: Despite the fact that many Americans claim that persons under 21 do not have the capacity to handle drinking, in my opinion, drinking age should be lowered from 21 to 18 due to the fact that teenagers at the age of 18 can make important. Lowering Drinking Age: A Crucial.

Alcohol belongs in the category of psychoactive substances one can legally buy in almost any country, according to certain criteria. Most often this criteria is age; in the majority of cases, it is set to 21 years. However, in a number of countries such as Australia, China, or Russia, it is set to 18 (ICAP). In the United states, calls for lowering.

Lowering the drinking age, especially in today s society will help young adults to be more responsible for their actions and make better decisions. A lower drinking age will promote responsibility in younger adults as well as providing role models for even younger.

LOWERING THE DRINKING AGE It is legal for eighteen year-olds to die for their country, it is legal for eighteen year-olds to marry, and it is legal for eighteen year-olds to vote. Why then isn t it legal for eighteen year-olds to drink? I don t think that is right, and I believe that the drinking age in the United States should be lowered from.

Should Alcohol Drinking Age Be Decreased of Increased? Should alcohol drinking age be decreased of increased? In my opinion it should be decreased because if we are classified as an adult and we are allowed to get married and etc. Why are we not allowed to drink. Lowering the drinking age would teach kids how to be more responsible at a younger.

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At 18, Is It Time for a Drink? Argumentative Essay

An American teenager who is eighteen years old is allowed to do several things, such as vote, join the military, and get married; however, drinking is not allowed until he or she is twenty-one years old.

The officially permitted drinking age in the U.S. was raised from eighteen to twenty-one in 1988 due to the National Minimum Age Drinking Act that had been signed into law four years earlier by President Ronald Reagan.

The main reason was maturity; that is, at eighteen one is not mature enough to drink responsibly (Kiesbye, 2). However, I agree with the verdict of the group of university and college presidents that the drinking age should be lowered from twenty-one to eighteen.

Opponents of lowering the legal drinking age usually refer to the dangers of binge drinking. They say that the practice is increasing and that any person who is below eighteen is simply not responsible enough to have an alcoholic beverage.

This type of drinking most of the time occurs in the underground and hidden places where the teenagers cannot be discovered. However, although binge drinking is a problem in America, the root cause is the high drinking age that our lawmakers have instituted ignoring certain realities.

Let us face the reality: if a person wants to drink, he or she will definitely find a way to do that. And since legal adults (those over eighteen) are unable to get hold of alcohol themselves, they will inevitably go to hidden places and drink excessively without any supervision or guidance.

When the drinking age is lowered, teenagers can drink responsibly without having to hide themselves. Therefore, “the current limit ignores the reality of drinking during college years and drives it underground, making binge drinking more dangerous and students less likely to seek help in an emergency” (Gordon and Holland, para. 2).

I think it is of essence to question this law: why is it that the age of twenty-one is the “magical’ age that a person is considered as intelligent and mature enough to drink alcohol? Truly, some adults consume alcohol irresponsibly. On the other hand, some young people are able to drink responsibly.

At eighteen, Americans are regarded as adults. It may seem odd to allow those above eighteen years to marry, drive their own cars, and do other sorts of things, and yet to be prevented by the same law from taking a glass of wine in a café or even a glass of champagne at their own wedding party. I feel that it does not make sense to have a limit that is higher than the legally recognized age of maturity.

Young people look at alcoholic beverages as something exciting (Bishop, 19). They consider it an activity preserved for the adults; however, young people want to be adults As Soon As Possible. Therefore, as is the case in most institutions, they usually carry fake identity cards to drinking dens; thus, leading to more problems, or steal the drinks from their parents’ drink cupboard.

Maintaining the drinking age at twenty-one does not encourage responsible drinking. In addition, when the opportunity to take alcohol arises, “Let us compensate for the lost time” attitude crops in resulting in binge drinking, which leads to results that are even more disastrous.

By reducing the legal drinking age, it would inevitably water down some of the temptation to take alcohol since the young people often say that it is more fun when it is illegal.

And, more so, in most cases, young people tend to engage in illicit activities. Therefore, lowering the age will reduce this tendency. In reality, increasing the drinking age is even worse than not doing anything at all simply because most individuals would want to get drunk as a sign of rebellion to the authority. “Not much can be done to control student drinking.

Americans younger than 21 casually defy the law by secretly drinking. If the law was changed, the practice can take place in the open, where it could be better monitored and moderated” (Snelgrove, para. 22). I think that the obsession of wanting to consume alcohol would lose its appeal if drinking were not regarded as purely an adult thing.

As pointed out by the article, “At 18, is it time for a drink?” teen drinking is longstanding problem, which has affected the American society and the drinking age limit has not done enough to cut short.

The American society does not care to instruct the teenagers’ on limits or responsibilities; however, they apparently assume that the teenagers will know their limits and be responsible consumers of alcoholic beverages upon attaining the lawful “magical age” of twenty-one.

A number of developed countries in Europe, such as France, Belgium, and Italy, have established a legal minimum drinking age at sixteen years. It is interesting to note that in those countries one is allowed to drive at eighteen years of age.

If the American society can focus more on educating the youth on responsible drinking habits rather than restriction, then several problems can be prevented (Gordon and Holland, para.16). The youth in the U.S., unlike their counterparts in Europe, are not able to learn how to consume alcohol and other substances gradually, safely and with caution.

Even though the average daily consumption of alcohol in some European nations such as France and Spain is higher than in the United States, the percentage of alcoholism and irresponsible drinking is much lower due to education on safe drinking habits and enforcement of gradual drinking behavior.

Supporters of the legal drinking age often cite possible increase in car accidents as a reason to maintain the drinking age. However, they fail to realize that individuals of all ages get into car crashes, teenagers and adults, when they abuse alcohol.

Educating the public on the dangers of this vice can be more beneficial than simply giving restrictions. In most countries in Europe, teenagers are permitted to drive at eighteen years of age, and also to drink responsibly at the same age.

Therefore, they are able to learn early about the dangers of drinking alcohol and practice good drinking habits. I think that lowering the drinking age would be able to reduce the number of car crashes that are related to excessive consumption of alcohol.

Restrictions can be put to prevent the teenagers from drinking, but can they really be stopped? No one was there to stop the over ten million American teens aged twelve to twenty who have already drunk an alcoholic beverage at present. Out of this number, it is astonishing that about half of them are engaging in binge drinking.

To put more facts on the table, it is estimated that about eighty percent of students in grade nine through twelve will have tasted at least one drink of an alcoholic beverage in their lifetime and about fifty percent of these students have tasted at least one drink of alcohol in the last one month.

So, tell me, are restrictions stopping them from pursing their illicit courses? Abuse of alcohol among the teens is a real problem that we should not ignore the way we are doing now through unfair restrictions.

Since more and more teens are destroying their lives, I suggest that we try something different, something that can ultimately bear fruits since the high drinking age seems to be taking us nowhere. Therefore, I strongly believe that lowering the drinking age and then educating the teenagers on the dangers of alcohol consumption can reduce this problem.

We should all recognize that America has a huge problem with teen drinking. The only way to find a solution to this problem is by stopping to ignore it. “It’s time we look at the issue afresh and see whether there are better solutions than we currently have in place because, after all, we haven’t solved the problem” (Gordon and Holland, para. 8).

The American teenagers should get more education about the effects of alcohol, rather than giving them punishment. The legal drinking age should be restored to eighteen since the current age at twenty-one lacks any real basis. A lowered drinking age will bring us to reality and institute better ways of curbing the vice. Consequently, fewer problems would arise.

Works Cited

Bishop, Bruce. Effects of lowering the drinking age . Salem, Or. : Legislative Research, 1979. Print.

Gordon, Larry, and Holland, Gale. “ At 18, is it time for a drink? ” Los Angels Times . 2008. Web.

Kiesbye, Stefan. Should the legal drinking age be lowered? Detroit : Greenhaven Press, 2008. Print.

Snelgrove, Erin. “18 or 21? Drinking age debate heats up.” Yakima-herald . 2008. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2024, March 28). At 18, Is It Time for a Drink? https://ivypanda.com/essays/at-18-is-it-time-for-a-drink/

"At 18, Is It Time for a Drink?" IvyPanda , 28 Mar. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/at-18-is-it-time-for-a-drink/.

IvyPanda . (2024) 'At 18, Is It Time for a Drink'. 28 March.

IvyPanda . 2024. "At 18, Is It Time for a Drink?" March 28, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/at-18-is-it-time-for-a-drink/.

1. IvyPanda . "At 18, Is It Time for a Drink?" March 28, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/at-18-is-it-time-for-a-drink/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "At 18, Is It Time for a Drink?" March 28, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/at-18-is-it-time-for-a-drink/.

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