Table of ContentsBackgroundConclusionWorks CitedBackground The legal drinking age limit has been the subject of debate over the years which focuses on determining the appropriate age for responsible consumption behavior, given its high addiction rates. All 50 U.S. states have now set the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) at 21, a higher standard than most developed countries, which is 18, with a few exceptions like Japan and South Korea. However, the legal drinking age has not always been set at 21. It has undergone numerous revisions over the years, influenced by political events, legislation and societal groups such as religious institutions. When the 26th Amendment was passed, lowering the legal voting age from 21 to 18, 30 states sparked a debate over personal accountability that saw states change the MLDA to 18, 19, or 20. The new changes in the MLDA, however, were called into question after increasing reports of car accidents in the 1970s, Congress finally passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 which brought the MLDA to 21 years. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayThe MLDA changes have not been an effective strategy to combat harmful drinking behaviors, which prompts us to recommend revising the MLDA to a lower limit. The increase in the MLDA limit has pushed teens to drink in unsafe environments without the assistance of a mature adult. The growing debate in favor of lowering the MLDA to 18 argues that it would reduce illegal alcohol consumption, prevent alcohol dependence, and allow the collection of accurate data on the alcohol consumption of young people who will acquire drinks legitimately. Lowering the legal drinking age prevents young adults from drinking. illegally. The legal drinking age of 21 encourages young adults to produce false ID cards to drink illegally. Young people are now prohibited from drinking without supervision, which leads to the development of uncontrolled behavior. There is a need to reduce the MLDA to enable adults to benefit from early alcohol counseling. Given that the law sets the legal age of an adult at 18, the gap between the legal age and the legal drinking age encourages adolescents to fake their identity and adopt drinking habits. dangerous alcohol. In the United States, turning 18 means you now have the right and responsibility to vote, smoke, serve on juries, sign contracts, get married, be prosecuted as an adult, and joining the military, which creates a desire to be seen as a fully responsible adult. Once an individual is declared an adult based on their age, they should be allowed to do everything adults are allowed to do because they have the capacity to handle the consequences. If an individual declared an adult based on his age is granted all other rights except the right to drink, it becomes tempting to know why this individual is not allowed to drink, even if he can smoke and get married. The ban on drinking is an aspect that does not recognize one's ability. being responsible, which encourages teenagers over 18 to drink because they are curious about whether they are capable of behaving as responsible adults, promotes a general lack of respect and is incongruous with other areas of the lawAmerican where 18 is the legal age. With a three-year gap between adulthood and legal drinking, teens often turn to an easy but illegal way to obtain alcohol: fake IDs. Nearly two-thirds of people surveyed in a study by researchers at the Center on Young Adult Health and Development at the University of Maryland School of Public Health used fake IDs to buy money. alcohol in a sample of 1,015 students. This high percentage shows how ineffective the current law is in stopping underage drinking, since at least half of the student population is underage. Since casual drinking opportunities are limited as they illegally pose as older people, young people using fake IDs will take advantage of these opportunities to drink excessively. Excessive alcohol consumption in a relatively short period of time develops into dangerous drinking behavior. Kingkade notes that research by Amelia M. Arria, associate professor of behavioral and community health at the University of Minnesota at Duluth, highlights the relationship between fake IDs and frequent reporting alcohol use. “In our sample, we found a clear pathway between more frequent use of fake IDs and more frequent alcohol consumption, which leads to a higher risk of developing alcohol dependence. Such cases of false documents to access the drink imply that parents who direct their children towards responsible consumption are not involved. This leads to the growth of alcohol problems like addiction and reckless driving while intoxicated. If the legal drinking age were lowered, then adolescents would be less likely to engage in illegal and dangerous drinking behaviors since they would reach the legal drinking age much earlier. Lowering the MLDA is therefore a solution to guarantee healthy drinking behavior among experimental young people thanks to the advice offered earlier before they start consuming alcohol in secret without supervision. Lowering the drinking age prevents alcohol dependence. Combating alcohol addiction relies on an individual's ability to control their drinking behaviors, which can only be achieved by allowing them to become familiar with drinking SHAO 4 under monitoring. The ability to limit alcohol consumption relies on knowledge and direct contact with alcoholic beverages, which is essential to the development of a healthier relationship between adolescents and alcohol consumption. Heath, an anthropology professor at Brown, explains a cultural difference between the United States and European countries like France and Italy, where parents give children small amounts of wine at family meals. "By doing this, parents educate their children about alcohol and strip drinking of its taboo appeal, which can encourage rebellious teenagers to sneak into basements and forests to binge away from the crowd. adult supervision,” Heath said. Heath further argues that the introduction of alcohol early in life saying that "alcohol has no mystique." It's not serious. On the other hand, where it is prohibited until the age of 21, there is a bit of a “forbidden fruit” syndrome. By lowering the drinking age, alcohol would no longer seem like an inaccessible or unknown concept. Letting the idea sink in slowly seems like a much better approach than putting a lid on the alcohol.Early education, rather than maintaining a complete ban on alcohol before age 21, would better combat excessive drinking or other alcohol-related problems by allowing familiarization with aspects of alcohol consumption, such as avoiding addiction at a young age. Conflicting Perspectives and Accurate Data Collection Strategic planning of alcohol-related campaigns to address cases such as addiction, drinking behaviors and trends requires reliable statistics; However, statistics on illicit alcohol consumption are affected by the lack of data on hidden alcohol consumption among young people. This aspect can be corrected by lowering the MLDA to capture relatively accurate data including youth statistics. Discrepancies in studies involving different research groups have caused more conflict in the debate over the correct MLDA. Since young people are driven by the desire to be seen as adults, most young people between the ages of 16 and 21 are tempted to drink and experiment with alcoholic beverages in secret before the official legal age. This leads to the lack of data on alcohol consumption, which has raised conflicting perspectives on studies on the impact of alcohol on health, accidents and health. From a health perspective, reducing MLDA provides early familiarization with alcohol and informed decision-making, which refutes the assertion that early familiarization with alcohol consumption leads to brain damage. The National Institute of Mental Health found that the brain may not be fully developed at age 18—not even until age 25. Underdevelopment indicates that the brain is vulnerable. In order to prove their point, many experiments have been conducted to show and prove the relationship between alcohol consumption at an early age and brain damage. In one of the studies conducted by Crews, director of the UNC Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies, titled "Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Animal Research," a continuing pattern of binge drinking at the adolescence affects memory, impairs sensitivity to motor impairments, and damages frontal and anterior cortical regions, which is important in the development of self-regulation, judgment, reasoning, problem solving, and impulse control. With this and many other research findings, it is not surprising that an overwhelming majority of the population supports the current law: out of fear that alcohol causes brain damage, although the question of its credibility arises. Only by lowering the MLDA can data be collected to settle the debate on the impact of the MLDA limit on health and accidents caused by alcohol consumption, through the collection of data from all respondent groups, including young people. On the causes of accidents, studies show that although lowering the MLDA reduces road accidents and fatalities, more success in accident prevention is reported when a lower MLDA conflicts with accuracy. data collected. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that alcohol is responsible for more than 4,300 deaths per year among underage youth. Along the same lines, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimated that MLDA 21 reduced the number of fatal traffic crashes among 18- to 20-year-olds by 13 percent and saved approximately 27,052 ​​lives between 1975 and 2008. These numbers make people think that MLDA 21 is doing a good job reducing the number of juvenile-related deaths. 2016