Drinking age

Trang Nguyen
Sean Smith
English 101
09 May 2014
Drinking Age Should Be At Age 21 Many American adults assume that drinking age must be age 21, because starting to drink alcohol early would have a lot of negative consequences such as having more car accidents, risks of lungs cancers, and so on. On the other hand, some American teenagers also believe if the law allowed the underage drinking, we would have several car accidents, which happens every day. In the article “Heavy Drinking on College Campuses: No Reason to Change Minimum Legal Drinking Age of 21,” Drew K. Saylor shows what bad if you drink alcohol underage is, and Saylor says,
“There was also evidence of a “trickle-down” effect on alcohol-related crashes among drivers, with the ratio of the alcohol-related crash rate before and after the policy change 14% larger for 15- to 17-year-old males and 24% larger for females in the same age range” (332).
But I do not deny drinking alcohol helps some people to cope with stress, and helps people to become more open in contrast to when they are sober and proper; alcohol can bring people together to share stories as well. At the same time I believe that the drinking age should not lower than 21, because I believe most of car accidents often occur by drunk drivers. I agree with Drew K. Saylor that the law must not change about the drinking age, and those teenagers should stop using alcohol underage rather than arguing and debating about lowering the drinking age. Drinking alcohol immature is the common the importance issue in the United States, and it is often said that drinking alcohol affects the moral behaviors, especially when you are drunk. At the underage, it will be terrible because at that age, these teenagers have more influences from the outside environment such as learning those terrible things from friends. In one hand, I agree with Marisa M. Silveri that those teenagers drink alcohol because they might be influenced by the history of the alcohol dipsomania family, who always use alcohol like use water, because either they want to relax or they have mental disturbance. On the other hand, I still insist that drinking alcohol is not healthy, especially when more damages happen for those underage people. In addition, you always see most of the alcohol drinkers who are often violent to other people because those drinkers cannot control their behaviors and their actions when they are drunk. Therefore, in the article “Alcohol-Related Brain Damage In Humans,” Amaia M. Erdozain and other authors believe that using alcohol damages the cells, the tissues, the organs, and other systems in the brains, and they explain,
“H & E staining and light microscopy of prefrontal cortex tissue revealed a reduction in the levels of cytoskeleton surrounding the nuclei of cortical and subcortical neurons, and a disruption of subcortical neuron patterning in alcoholic subjects.”
In short, I will briefly note, drinking alcohol will not be great like those American teenagers think, because alcohol will damage their brains’ tissues and will influence to their moral behaviors.
To today, people still forget that drinking alcohol would have several benefits and several harms. Some American people believe that drinking alcohol decreases the risk of the cardiovascular disease, prevents us to get sick from the cold, increases our memories, and prevents us from the gallstones and the diabetes. However, people should know how to drink alcohol moderately instead of unlimitedly consuming it. What I am trying to say here is that drinking alcohol not only brings some disadvantages but also brings some advantages, and people may not blame any awful things to alcohol because the evidence shows that drinking booze moderately will help you prevent from several diseases, which you may not know before. Although not all Americans think alike, some of them will probably dispute my claims that some American people cannot moderate their behaviors when they are drunk or not drunk. In fact, all of those evidences I say do not mean that the law should allow the underage to drink alcohol. In the article "Will Increasing Alcohol Availability By Lowering the Minimum Legal Drinking Age Decrease Drinking and Related Consequences Among Youths?", Henry Wechsler and Nelson F. Toben compare and describe to prove that the law has no reasons to change the drinking age to 21 like they says, "Evidence supporting the minimum legal drinking age of 21 years is strong and growing. A wide range of empirically supported interventions is available to reduce underage drinking." At first glance, teenagers might say that alcohol is still a natural medicine to help them prevents from several diseases. But on closer inspection, drinking alcohol can destroy the lungs and the livers, can damage the brain which lead us to not have any control of our behaviors when we are drunk. According to these evidences, I would like to repeat again that teenagers have to moderate when they use alcohol.
You would think that the advertisements cannot affect the underage drinking alcohol to American teenagers, but you are completely wrong because those advertisements are very interested in. I believe that teenagers are still young, and they also want to explore about their lives. In the article “Do Time Restrictions On Alcohol Advertising Reduce Youth Exposure?,” Craig S. Ross, Avalon Bruijn, and David Jernigan show people know how to buy and drink alcohol because of the influencing advertisements from the television and the radio. In the other words, Ross, Bruijn, and David believe that people are too easy to be fooled, so those advertisement can abuse the weakness to convince people to buy their products, alcohol as the authors say,
“This study uses simulation analysis and comprehensive database of television alcohol advertising to demonstrate that time restrictions are likely to reduce advertising exposure to the youngest viewers while increasing exposure for the high-risk teenage population.”
Yet, is it necessarily true that American teenagers will not use alcohol if those advertisements did not appear? Is making those advertisements disappear would be possible? Ultimately, what is at stake here is that teenagers must be aware of alcohol advertisements from the radio and the television.
However, I’ve always believed that American teenagers can buy every kind of alcohol at every where easily; some of them might go to ask for help from friends and parents. In the article “Assessing the Predictive Ability of The Transtheoretical Model's Heavy Episodic Drinking Constructs Among a Population of Underage Students," Rose Marie Ward and Hugo Josef Schielke says that some teenagers can buy alcohol at any stores because some sellers are not careful enough about asking to show the teenagers' ID cards. For instance, Paul Willner and Gavin Rowe emphasize,
“However, a comparison of the present data with earlier data on actual alcohol sales . . . photographs were used in the present study, suggests that only around half of underage alcohol sales can be accounted for by misperceptions of age.”
I encourage that the law should be more restricted for buying alcohol underage .Of course, many American teenagers will disagree on the grounds of drinking underage. After all, I recommend that the law must be more restricted in selling alcohol for teenagers.
Although I grant that drinking alcohol is horrible, I still maintain that drinking alcohol below than age 21 has many negatives effects, and it is the only way to lead those teenagers to the social issues such as using drugs, and risky sexual practices. Michael T. McKay, C. Cole Jon, and Harry Sumnall believes that most of American teenagers would like to negotiate about drinking alcohol with their parents, but in fact the percentage of those most teenagers, who negotiate with their parents, is really small. Michael T. McKay, C. Cole Jon, and Harry Sumnall say that those teenagers would have taught by their parents instead of forcing or saying bad things about drinking alcohol even though the benefits of drinking alcohol are still having in today's world. In the article "Teenage thinking on teenage drinking: 15- to 16-year olds’ experiences of alcohol in Northern Ireland," Michael T. McKay, C. Cole Jon, and Harry Sumnall says, "First, they believed that asking questions or being open about their behavior would result in negative consequences" (328). At the same time, I believe that those teenagers will receive several negative consequences from their parents if those teenagers ask for drinking alcohol underage. My view, however, contrary to what Michael T. McKay, C. Cole Jon, and Harry Sumnall have argued, is that the minimum of alcohol drinking age must be at age 21.
These findings have important implications for the broader domain of the next generation's future because those next generations might learn what they see from the old generation do. But is my proposal evidence enough to prove? Christopher A. Swann, Sheran Michelle, and Phelps Diana apparently observe the students from Harvard College, New York, and they prove that the proportion of underage drinking of having parents is less than not having parents. The evidence show how important the parents will affect to their children in their lifetime. In the article "Underage alcohol policies across 50 California cities: an assessment of best practices," Sue Thomas talks about the underage drinking at every state in the United State. Therefore, Thomas did a study about drinking age. In this study, Thomas sees that the improvement of controlling limitation for the underage is better, but it still is not great enough. In the other hand, Thomas and I believe that the law has to be more restricted in the underage drinking. In the article "Factors associated with reductions in alcohol use between high school and college: an analysis of data from the College Alcohol Study," Christopher A. Swann, Sheran Michelle, and Phelps Diana say,
“A number of characteristics were related to reductions in drinking. Students whose fathers did not attend college were more likely to reduce alcohol consumption (odds ratio [OR] =1.28; 95% . . . .”
To sum up, what is at stake here is the history of the family and the social outside environment are the most common which caused in increasing the underage drinking.
So far we have been talking about the disadvantages and advantages of the underage drinking. But isn’t it the real issue here for the solution of the underage drinking? At the same time I believe families play a big role in preventing the underage drinking, simply because they're the closest and the most influential factor, I also believe that parents can talk with their children about drinking alcohol regarding their expectations, limits and its dangerous effect. In the article "Talking with Kids Deters Underage Drinking," USA Today Magazine states,
“There are also many things that parents can do in their communities to help reduce underage drinking. . . . Parents can also help eliminate alcohol advertising in their neighborhoods, and make sure that adult siblings don't provide alcohol for their younger brothers and sisters.”
In addition, Jessica Malanjum and Robert Di Nicolantonio explain that parents can have a better understanding in conversations with their children to know more about whom their children spend time with during their free time; the pressure the peers are putting on their children are very important. Hence, what you talk does not have as many impacts as what you do. The families themselves have to be the role model for their children. They have to pledge not to give alcohol to the underage teenagers. As a result, the drinking age should not be lower than age 18 because underage drinking has several negative consequences such as having more car accidents and risks of lungs cancers. Drew K. Saylor says that these teenagers should stop using alcohol underage instead of arguing and debating to lower the drinking age. At first glance, teenagers might say that alcohol is still a natural medicine to help them prevents from several diseases. But on closer inspection that drinking alcohol can destroy the lungs and liver, damage the brain, and has no control the behavior when you are drunk. Moreover, Amaia M. Erdozain and other authors believe that drinking alcohol will damages the brain tissues and influences to the moral behaviors. At the same time I believe families play a big role in preventing the underage drinking, simply because they're the closest and the most influential factor, I also believe that parents can talk with their children about drinking alcohol regarding your expectation, limits and its dangerous effect.

Works cited
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