Creating a Healthy Drinking Culture for Youth in the United States
As teens begin to become young adults many things begin to change. With this change
comes maturity, and along with maturity passed times and hobbies change while begin to
habits form. Once you enter high school activities change from sleepovers and candy to parties
and drinking in the blink of an eye. Alcohol alone is a not a danger to youth but it has become
so by years of restraint and disdain. As a nation our current views and policies on alcohol are
damaging to our youth. Youth are strictly told they cannot have alcohol until age 21, but when
all their friends are going to parties and getting drunk they can’t help but be enticed to try.
With no prior knowledge from elders, from fear of getting trouble, they often are reckless with
their alcohol use causing unneeded complications that could be avoided. Avoiding this is easy,
lowering the legal drinking age would give youth a chance to learn to drink safely and create a
healthy drinking environment. The minimum legal drinking age in the United States should be
lowered to 18 because it creates a negative drinking culture and causes teens and college
students to binge drink.
The minimum legal drinking age should be lowered because it creates a negative
drinking culture in the US. The National Minimum Drinking Age Act was created in 1984 by
president Ronald Regan in an attempt to lessen alcohol related car accidents in 18-20 year olds.
This act caused the number of fatal car accidents involving 18-24 year olds to lower from 61%
to 31% from 1982 to 1995(Miron and Tetelbaum). This is a significant improvement but in the
meantime it created an even bigger problem in America. Most European countries have a legal
drinking age for liquor of 18 and a legal drinking age for beer and wines of 16, even with these
ages it has low enforcement(Tucker). In America, on the other hand, we have a strict number of
21, one of the highest in the world, that is very heavily enforced and causes thousands of
America’s youth to receive future damaging misdemeanors and felonies. The drinking culture in
America is extremely dangerous, teens begin drinking as young as 13 and continue for years to
come before they ever turn 21. This creates a drinking culture similar to that of the prohibition
era, filled with teens and young adults sneaking around, drinking in secret and increased
dangerous activity. Because of the heavy enforcement of the legal drinking age many teens and
young adults grow to resent law enforcement, weakening the already weak respect for law
enforcement that youth once had(Fulton).
In comparison to Europe, Americans have a much different drinking culture. While in
Europe it is common for children to engage in light drinking with parents. This light hearted and
fewer restricted drinking causes less problems with underage drinking in Europe. Drinking
