Underage Drinking

             Young adults in this country hold many responsibilities and are fortunate to have many privileges; however, those between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one are denied the privilege of consuming alcoholic beverages. How is it, we young adults are able to vote, pay taxes, and buy cigarettes but cannot purchase alcohol? Being allowed to have theses responsibilities shows how society treats us, mature.
             The legal drinking age is unrealistic. Prohibiting the sale of liquor to young adults creates an atmosphere where binge drinking and alcohol abuse have become a problem. Banning drinking for young people makes it a badge of adulthood and emdash; a tantalizing forbidden fruit. In order to get a drink, teenagers will carry fake I.D.s or sneak drinks from their parent’s liquor cabinets. This kind of devious attitude does not encourage responsible drinking. When the opportunity to drink arises, there is a kind of “Let’s make up for lost time” attitude. This results in binge drinking (www.ilstu.edu).
             As it is, high school and college students unprepared for the responsibility easily obtain alcohol. This widespread availability of alcohol to minors discounts the effectiveness of the minimum drinking age law (www.crwl.utexas.edu). Therefore, I think by lowering the legal drinking to eighteen or nineteen or even to young adults, and being allowed to drink in controlled environments such as restaurants and official school and university functions would lower the amounts of binge drinking.
             As it is, those of us young adults who are college students are considered binge drinkers, and are more likely to be violent, take risks and create dangerous situations for themselves and others (Mitchell, pg51). If the drinking age would be lowered, and college students could drink the situation would be different. Students could better control circumstances of their experiences with alcohol, and drinking would lose ...

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