Although having the legal age of drinking at 21 has saved many lives from alcohol related accidents, reducing the age to 16 would introduce maturity to drinking socially with other people. Not being able to drink at bars, restaurants and other social gatherings hinders the ability to know how to correctly drink in a mature manner. Drinking around mature adults and being treated like one makes a lot of influence on the decisions teens and young adults have on how to be social and/or drinking and driving.
In 1999 a study, from researchers at Columbia University, showed that more that 5 million students under the age limit binge drink (more than 5 drinks per sitting) at least once a month, and an estimated $27 billion dollars was spent yearly on alcohol by young adults under the age limit. This means that $27 billion dollars was spent on alcohol to be drunk unsupervised and irresponsibly by minors. Instead, if the drinking age was reduced to 16 this alcohol could be drunk legally in bars and taverns, with a mature point of view.
In 1984 a law was passed on the age to purchase alcohol to age 21.This was meant to lower the amount of alcohol related automobile fatalities. By doing this, people (young adults) are not introduced to the idea of socializing maturely at a bar or restaurant while drinking. Instead they are forced to drink privately and irresponsibly with others that do not understand how to drink. This leads to the immature ideas of drinking oneself silly. This type of thinking is a way to rebel against authority, which is, while a teenager, one of the “cool” things to do. This leads to bad decisions like drinking and driving, and teenage pregnancies.
Europe’s legal drinking age is 16 in most countries, and no legal drinking age in others. This introduces them to alcohol at a much younger age. They may binge drink once in a while like everyone else, but they understand the social aspect of it too. This results in a hugely reduced number of alcohol substance abuse. Also many families introduce their children to small amounts of alcohol in a controlled environment, such as holidays and weddings, at an earlier age. This helps them understand the effects of alcohol before being able to drive.
Drinking is a big responsibility not only for ones self but for the others around them, that’s why lowering the legal age to 16 would not work for us since our driving laws are different than the UK’s. They are more lenient on drinking laws than they are on driving laws. People in the UK start driving at the age of 18 which gives them two years to figure out what drinking socially is really like. Unlike the UK, we have it backwards. We have 5 years to figure out how to drive and once we get used to the concept we are able to drink legally, but this isn’t to say that we do not drink under the age. That is why I think we should do the same and higher our driving age to 18 at the same time.
Studies from The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have shown that, since 1985, almost 16,000 lives have been saved due to the drinking age 21 or above. We can all agree that this is a good thing. But would this number increase if people were introduced to alcohol before driving? In the 1920’s we tried to rid alcohol substance abuse by banning alcohol altogether, known as Prohibition. These laws didn’t work out as well as planned because the laws weren’t enforced by the people. These laws led to a social break down because anyone that wanted to have a drink had to do it illegally, which meant that people could not drink socially or be forced to pay the penalty. These laws were later expunged due to the huge amounts of citizens breaking the laws. The point is that we are repeating these same problems that we had during prohibition, and inevitably leading our teenagers to drink irresponsibly and drive.
There are things to look at when thinking about lowering the drinking age. Drinking and driving is a big deal, probably one of the biggest issues with teens. By lowering the drinking age and increasing the driving age, teens would be more understanding of alcohol and its effects, much like the Europeans. They would have more of a mature idea of drinking socially since they would have a place to drink legally, such as bars and restaurants. This would help teens make better decisions on drinking and driving and ultimately become more educated on the subject.
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