Minimum Age To Drink Alcohol
Minimum age to drink alcohol is also termed as legal age. Most countries varies in their legislations on minimum age, whereby most countries takes the age of 18 and 16 with exception of the United States with a minimum of 21 and China which has no minimum drinking age. Drinks are also distinguished according to their alcohol content. Beer and wines have fairly low alcohol content as compared to spirits which are strong drinks with high concentration of alcohol. Legislations governing alcohol varies but minors who are below the legal age are not allowed inside drinking halls like pubs and are not also allowed to purchase alcohol(Megan, Web pp).
Legal drinking age in the United States is mainly aimed at reducing car accidents. The drinking age is not unanimously set by the states; this is because it is not a federal law. However, to make sure that each states sticks to a set age limit the federal government usually refuses to disburse highway transportation funding to such states that allows drinking to the underage. The reason why the minimum age to drink should be at 18 is to help reduce deaths through car accidents. It is globally known that most of U.S citizens use personal automobiles for transportation thus increasing the mortality rate for drivers and fatality rate for the same people. Statistics shows that around forty three thousand (43,000) lives are lost each year as result of fatal car accidents (Ruth, Web pp).
From the history of drinking in the United States, which has been experienced that drinking among the young people is very prevalent, and given the fact that in America, the legal drinking age limit has been set as 21 years. Therefore to avoid these happenings the legal drinking age limit should be set at the age of 18 years. It therefore means that the young adults at this particular age are allowed to drink in a controlled environment such as a restaurant, in official school and university functions and also in the pubs. With this they drink in situations where responsible drinking is been monitored and they are taught through educational programs and role modelling adults. This will help in creating responsibility and mature and sensible behaviours of drinking in the young adult. Although the legal age in America is 21, majorities of those who drink heavily are those that are under the age of 21 years. The reason for so doing is because of the fact that they see alcohol as the “forbidden fruit” and as a symbol of entering the world of adults to show the others that you have already matured, and given that the government does not allow them to do so they tend to think that alcohol must be something that is very good for them to try, and in so doing they end up being very heavy drinkers and one who are very irresponsible(Ruth, Web pp).
An example of a research that was conducted showed that for those who are under the age of 21 years, 22% were found to be heavy drinkers, while those that were 21 and above years of age, only 18% were found to be heavy drinkers. This shows the disparity between the two, which means that young adults start drinking even before they are 21 years, which means therefore that, its sensible enough if the age limit was set at 18 years. Given that a person at the age of 18 years in America is allowed to make death and life decisions in the military then it’s ironical that the same people cannot make decisions about drinking (Ruth, Web pp).
Adolescent is the period that young people experiences dramatic physical, lifestyle and emotional changes. At this age there is an increase in independence which is associated with alcohol use. For this reason being a teenager is a risk factor not only for starting to drink and also for dangerous drinking. Therefore, to control the effects of experimental drinking it is important to lower the drinking age to 18 years whereby the young adults will be observed and be given the necessary precautions, rather than to leave them to experiment on their own which might be disastrous to the individual and the society at large. The age limit of 21 in America has not been working given that most young people by the time they are of age 21 have already tasted alcohol. Therefore it’s not succeeding in limiting drinking among the young people. The only thing the law is doing is just driving the drinking out of the view of the public (John, Web pp).
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