Should we Lower the Drinking Age?

Photo by: Scott Ableman

Many people argue weather or not the drinking age should be lowered to18 or kept at 21. Some people think that the drinking age needs to be lowered to 18. This would increase the alcohol consumption of youth greatly and put more drunk drivers on the road. Others argue that 21 is a good, solid age for a drinking limit,and we need to leave it at 21. Keeping the age as is would save many lives, and keep our roads safe from the dangers of a drunk driver.

In my opinion, we need to keep the drinking age at 21. The reason I think this is because when the drinking age is at 21, alcohol consumption of youth drops drastically in comparison to when the age is 18. Another reason we need to keep the age at 21 is because it saves lives, about 800 a year! Most people would say that 800 people isn't a lot considering the number of people in the world, but that is somebody's life, and I feel that everybody's life is of value to this planet.

Now, some people who want to lower the drinking age would say that if we teach kids at a young age, like is European countries, to drink within their limit their limits then the drinking age is not a problem. Yes, some kids do learn to drink within their limits and they almost never get drunk, but if you look at the statistics most European countries have a very high rate of 15 and 16-year-olds almost always over-drinking, and in some bad cases they become addicted to alcohol.

If we lower the drinking age, innocent people could die and our society will be full of drunks if we loose control. I hope in the future we will keep the drinking age the same and learn quickly as a society if we do try and lower it.