Self Analysis

Throughout this blog, I logically presented ideas for the lowering of the drinking age. I minimized any emotional arguments. One thing that I did not write much about was the opposite view point, this simply is because there is not much information to keep the age at 21 besides the MADD organization. My blog provides several different reasons to lower the drinking age. First off, I pointed out that the blackmail involved to lower the drinking age could be considered blackmail and is unconstitutional. I then moved to point out that drinking could actually be beneficial to human health and keep off major illnesses. Many people were very astonished by this fact, and I used this to connect to my major idea to lower the drinking age. Lowering the drinking age and building up healthy drinking habits will be better for the country. For the MADD organization I read their website and realized that the arguments they used to lower the drinking age were extremely emotional based. Many of there ‘facts’ were bogus and made no sense if you thought about it, instead they focused heavily on the emotional route claiming that raising the drinking age would save countless innocent lives on the road. When the death count dropped in the 1990’s, MADD took credit for it. One could wonder if maybe it was the fact that cars were becoming safer with features such as air bags. I based my argument on information that I have learned over the course of the blog. I originally thought that the drinking age should be lowered because the government is taking away freedoms that are not constitutional while asking 18 year-olds to risk their life.

Implications

There is two things that I can see changing if the drinking age is not changed, and that is more money will be used to prosecute decent 18-21 year olds who drink instead of spending the money to correct other social problems. We already have agencies stepping up such as the Alcohol Law Enforcements (ALE) who focus mainly on people who drink illegally. They are prosecuting people who other wise could be contributing to society. The other change that I can see would be if that change lies in the health department. If more face can be proven that teaching good drinking habits can be greatly beneficial to human health, and then there may be a cause to think about how people drink. Yet another study has come out to show that drinking may in fact be beneficial to human health. Other than that, little stands to change. When people finally attain the age of 21, the drinking age no longer seems to be a big deal. As people grow older and become more conservative and have kids, they may in fact support the drinking age.

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Class Blogs

This blog is presenting arguments for the legalization of marijuana. It brings to light to States, California and Colorado, that has taken radical steps to legalizing marijuana. It then moves on the present evidence for why marijuana should be legalized. I feel that many people instantly jump against marijuana is because it has all the stereotypes of being a ‘drug’ and there for is horribly wrong. If you look at the facts presented, you can start to realize that, as a ‘drug’ is can be considerably less weak than other substances that are already legal.

This blog takes on the very challenging issue of separation of church and state. Many people once they start talking about religion start relying to much on theology and stray from facts. This blog dissects both sides of a very controversial issue effectively and brings both sides of the issue to light. The blog points out the almost constant hypocrisy of the government and brings up a solution to the problem

This last blots dives into stem cell research, which is also another highly contested issue that has religious pretexts. This blog realizes this and one of the first article posted dives right into the religious context. This blog is full of the political and religious aspects that are involved with the issue of stem cell issue. The information is very interesting and a good read.

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Links

I find this article especially interesting to read. On the MADD website they list a bunch of different reasons on why the drinking age should be set at 21. When I read it, they seemed a little exaggerated to me, and this article clearly debunks most of the reasons if not all the reasons MADD gives.

More information that I find interesting is a transcript of an interview with a professor from Indiana University. Dr. Engs moves to lower the drinking age for several reasons, which I agree with. For the most part, it is to allow people to enjoy alcohol in social environments instead of it becoming a highly fantasized substance.

This article which has I have presented already in this blog is a great article in debunking the idea that American teenagers are better off then their counterparts over the pond with their drinking habits..

This is another article that I found which backs up my idea that a higher drinking age just builds up a stigma when it comes to drinking. It is from a British blogger who moved to America after he was legal to drink, he writes about how the attitude is completely different when it comes to drinking.

For people who are looking for information to keep the drinking age at 21, MADD was the biggest proponent in changing the law to 21; their website is full of information that tries to validate the law change.

Theory

There have always been people against alcohol in America, first there was the prohibition that completely failed in any attempt to stop people from drinking alcohol. In the 1980’s a powerful lobbyist organization was formed, MADD. This was the beginning of having the drinking age at 21. The main issue with the drinking age is drunk driving. People are afraid that if the age is lowered to 18, then more people will hit the roads driving in an unfit condition. An agreement needs to come that backs the government out of controlling aspects of our adult lives that is not included in the constitution, but something has to be done to control drunk drivers. In lowering the drinking age to 18, penalties for drunk driving should increase. There really is no excuse for drunk driving at all; the current punishment for drunk driving is a fine and possible license suspension. The punishment for drunk driving should become a mandatory sentence, that way people can’t bargain for a lower sentence. With a mandatory sentence in place, they will have to pay the penalty, both the fine and the insurance premium up charge (450% increase for four years in NC).

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Binge drinking at UNC

Drinking is often associated with the college experience, after all college is the one time where you have the luxury to be able to study with the repercussions possibly being lower than if you were in your thirties. This is the same at UNC where greek life can play a major role in the accessibility of alcohol to underage drinkers.
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UNC-CH Student Health Service educators used the same Core Institute mail survey in spring 1996. Some 429 of 800 randomly selected students replied. Thirty-seven percent of UNC-CH's respondents reported binge drinking during the previous two weeks. Slightly more than half of the male respondents and a third of the female students reporting binging. Twenty-seven percent of students reported binge drinking more than once in the prior two weeks, and more than 6 percent reported more than five binge drinking episodes during the same period. http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/nov97/cspigt.html

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Having alcohol being apart of everyday society since teenagers were 16 or 18, would the binge drinking numbers go down or increase?

Another issue with the high drinking age is that it would appear that the government is sheltering the 18 – 20 year olds from the use of alcohol until they are older. The problem with this is that parents are supposed to tech their children about the ways of life to hopefully allow them to be able to survive with out to many problems once entering adulthood. If parents try and show their children different alcohols and perhaps help teach responsibility, they often find themselves in jail. Instead of parents being able to provide a reasonable drinking environment, illegal drinking is pushed into unsafe environments.

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Drinking is often associated with liver and many other diseases. Many people don’t realize that drinking in moderation can actually be healthy for you. Having a drink or two a night can actually help ward of Alzheimers as well as cardiovascular disease. This of course if the alcohol is drunk in moderation instead of binge drinking.

Having the drinking age is at 21 changes another major factor when people think about drinking. When you are younger than 21 you drink to get drunk and because it is cool. It usually happens in a dirty basement or something that relates to the same situation. If the age was lowered to 18, people would begin to drink for different reasons. They may be able to actually enjoy the alcohol instead of abusing the alcohol. That in effect will save lives beyond drinking and driving.

People have always engaged in substances that alter their state of mind since the beginning of man. As society was developed and modernized into the major global culture that we have today, limitations have been put on what substances you can use. Alcohol is one of those substances that have come under age restriction in almost every country. A lot of controversy has risen lately in America and Great Britain. Great Britain is debating about changing the drinking age to 21 and Americans drinking age was changed to 21 in 1984 and has come under ever increasing scrutiny.

It all started in the 1980’s when MADD (Mothers against Drunk Driving) lobbied that the drinking age needed to be changed to 21 to save lives. MADD presented arguments and statistics until the amendment was passed into law. Initially Ronal Regan claimed he was going to veto the bill because threatening money from the states would be against state’s right, but he ended up changing his mind. Know if the states do not raise the age to 21 they risk losing 10% of their highway funds.

There are many reasons for why the drinking age should be lowered to 18. When a person turns 18, they gain all the rights of being an adult, such as being able to vote, be sued, marry and much more. Do not forget the rights that you already have such as when people turn 12 they can get a hunting license and 16 people can drive. It would seem logical that 12 year olds should be trusted with guns yet legal adults are not allowed to drink a beer. The major problem with making alcohol illegal until your 21 is that it inevitably encourages binge drinking. When underage drinkers get access to alcohol they will notably drink more and they will drink harder liquor. The after effects of binge drinking are much more substantial than to have an occasional beer. Binge drinkers risk damage to the brain and loss of memory in adulthood. These major effects are usually found in binge drinkers though; the occasional drink does not seem to have the same effect. When the drinking age was increased, it just increased the time when underage drinkers will engage in binge drinking and be put at risk. By allowing people access to alcohol, it will reduce binge drinking and teach responsibility. If alcohol is used in moderation, not only does it teach responsibility but it can also be healthy for your heart.

MADD is one of the main proponents to keep the drinking age at 21. They view that if the drinking age is higher than it will lower the amount of drunken driving accidents. If people start drinking later, they will have more experience and at an older age, they would not be as interested to binge drink. Since the drinking age has been upped to 21, the amount of underage drinking has been reduced. Also youth drinking can be damaging to the brain, making it difficult to function in a social environment. Since the drinking age has been put into effect, the amount of deaths that result from drunk driving has decreased dramatically over the last 20 years.

There are many reasons why the drinking age should be lowered back to 18. To begin with, it would help reduce the amount of hypocrisy that is already present in our national government. If we look at the current struggle in the Middle East, one out of every six soldiers who die are deemed to irresponsible to be able to drink. Besides the blatant hypocrisy, there are also major health issues involved that suggest the drinking age should be lowered. When substances are illegal, they are usually used harder. Binge drinking usually peaks in the 18-21 year old age span before slowly decreasing as you reach adult hood. If the age is lowered to 18, people who wanted to drink, could go and drink what they want in the quantities that they choose, instead of drowning in Vodka or Everclear until they are in the EMS. This is especially hard since a lot of these are college students, and the negative effect of binge drinking is astounding.

There is no reason why the drinking age should be lowered back to 18. Every reason MADD gives is easily debunked by truly looking at what they are saying and looking at it in depth. The statistics are usually exaggerated, it is true that the amount of fatalities in car wrecks has lowered in the last 20 years, but also technology has also change. Cars are safer now and come standard with airbags. In the 1980, did people ever hear about a designated driver? MADD may be able to say that they have reduced the amount of car fatalities but they are forcing kids underground to drink in enormous amounts in secret. They may pass out in places and not be checked up on for hours at a time.

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Many reasons have been thrown out trying to explain that the drinking age at 21 is the right thing to do. In fact not only is it the right thing to do, but it also saves life’s. With most of the world having a lower drinking age, if an age at all. Statistics are often used to try and prove that Americans are better off because of the drinking age. As with any statistic, it is needed to do some background research on how the stat was created and if they carry any true weight at all. This online magazine shows that the statistics used to try and prove that the Europeans are binge, drunk alcoholics is actually a “junk science.”

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There are several different ways to look at how much power the constitution gives the government. It is possible that the government is using way to much power as it is. The government already takes one out of every three dollars we make, yet we are trillions of dollars in debt. How can this be? A radical idea would be that the government needs to be scaled back and focus on what the constitution allows them to do. By stepping back, we may lose social programs that are designed to help the unfortunate, but private organizations will step up. It is well known that government bureaucracy wastes untold amounts of money where the private sector is more precise in the way they spend money.

Taking money away from the states to blackmail them into following the federal government is one such power abuse that occurred with the change of the drinking age. If any state wanted to rise up and set a point, they would risk losing millions of dollars that help keep the infrastructure in tact. When did the government of the United States become a power hungry monster that is trying to control all aspects of the world, is that really what the founding fathers envisioned?

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Everyone has or will deal with the arbitrary number governments put on when they feel like you should drink. In an organized society, it is expected that rules will be created in the effort to create a safe environment for everyone. The question becomes at what age should you be legally allowed to drink alcohol. Currently USA establishes that you become a legal adult at age 18 but you are not allowed to drink alcohol until 21.

The way the amendment came to be by lobbyists and blackmail. MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, portrayed effectively to congress that the country would be safer if the drinking age was moved to 21, regardless of other dangers we face like archaic gun laws. Never the less the government decided to move the drinking age to 21, and the way the Federal government made sure the state’s would ratify the amendment was by using blackmail. The government would withhold money used for the Department of Transportation if the states did not ratify the amendment.

This brings up several different points; by reading the constitution does the national government have the power to denote when you can or cannot do something based on an arbitrary number like age? Also the way the government went about enforcing the amendment, it could be considered an abuse of the money and power, which should come from the people of the United States.

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