I don’t think that teenagers have the responsibility or capability to handle drinking while trying to grow up and learning new things all at the same time; would you be able to handle it all? I think that lowering the minimum legal drinking age will influence more binge drinking and more young people to abuse alcohol. Lowering the drinking age may also lead to more car accidents among teenagers. If the drinking age is left where it’s at then there might be less fatal accidents than if states lowered the Minimum Legal Drinking Age. In the 1970’s 30 states lowered the drinking age, however it didn’t last long. If America lets our young people today and our future leaders drink at a younger age, we would be risking a higher chance of our adult population abusing alcohol.

Some teens drink when they are under the Minimum Legal Drinking Age (MLDA), especially on college campuses and at high schools. Some of them have reasons to why they drink; however others drink under peer pressure or just because they want to. Many teens are going through a lot during their high school years and being pressured and allowed to drink does not make it better or easier. A few reasons to drink underage could be because of the religion that you follow or for some medical reasons. Lowering the minimum legal drinking age might not decrease the number of underage drinkers.

When a teenager is going through a lot of changes they can be more vulnerable to bad influences such as drinking and possibly driving under the influence. When some states’ Minimum Legal Drinking Age was moved to 21 years old in 1976, there was a decrease in fatal car accidents which saved approximately 21,887 lives. Many lives were saved because there were less young drinkers and less people driving under the influence. I think that’s a lot of lives saved and I don’t know why people would want to risk losing more lives than we have too. If it’s possible to save lives, why wouldn’t you want to?

Even though I don’t want the MLDA to be lowered, there are some people who think that it would be good to lower the drinking age. Some people think teenagers will learn to drink in moderation which will be good for our society so our whole population does not become alcoholics; however I think it will encourage more people to drink. Instead of teenagers drinking and hiding it, they could drink in public places and not consume as much alcohol; I don’t think that being watched drinking will not make teenagers drink as much. Some people ask the question, if teenagers are allowed the responsibility to drive when they are 16 years old why can’t they drink at an earlier age? I think that the answer to that question is because alcohol can make people do stupid things and we don’t want kids to do even more stupid things.

The answer to decrease the amount of underage drinking is not to lower the drinking age. After they increased the drinking age to 21 years old in 1976 the amount consumption of alcohol was lowered. In 2007 a poll was taken about whether America should lower the Minimum Legal Drinking Age to 18 years old and 77% of the people who took the poll decided against lowering the drinking age. I agree with the 77% because it could save many lives and then America won’t become a place with a lot of young alcoholics. A good reason to lower the drinking age is that it will save lives and kids will learn to follow the rules.