Opposition to Lowering the Drinking Age
People think
that lowering the drinking age is a bad idea due to the health concerns. These
health concerns can cover physical, emotional, and/or mental problems. The people’s
fear is that the younger the drinking age the more people will suffer these
problems and the longer that they’ll have to live with the problems.
Common
health risks of early alcoholics are black outs and memory loss, brain damage,
vitamin deficiencies, like Thiamine and vitamin B4, Wernicke–Korsakoff Syndrome
(vision changes and memory impairment), and the most common being liver and
heart disease. Barbra Meltz says, “[T]he human brain doesn't stop growing until
about age 21 or 22, and that alcohol consumption can alter or retard that
growth, including memory and test-taking ability.”[1] Because
of this, people do not believe that people under 18 are fully developed enough
to make the proper decision to drink or not to drink and to drink responsibly.
If they do drink, the health risk is higher than if they were over 21. At the
same time, alcohol poisoning is a big factor in the decision to keep the
drinking age at 21. According to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, “there are approximately 80,000 deaths attributable to excessive
alcohol use each year in the United States.”[2]
Another reason the minimum drinking age starts at 21 is the drunk-driving problem in the United States. According to the FBI, “over 1.41 million drivers were arrested in 2010 for driving under the influence of alcohol.”[3] And in recent years, drunk driving has gone down since the legal drinking age was raised. This attributes to the mental, emotional and physical problems whether it is the person who was drunk or the person hit and sometimes both.
More
reasons for keeping the drinking age are the mental and emotional disorders
that come with alcoholism. Some are depressive disorders, bipolar disorders, anxiety
disorders, panic disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, schizophrenia, personality
disorders and troubles with controlling aggression. These disorders break up
families and relationships. The conclusion is that it’s better to prevent these
disorders from happening at an early age. Many argue that, if the government
were to lower the drinking age, these problems would increase in young people.
These
are legitimate problems. Not everyone over drinks and not everyone use alcohol
as a tool to deal with his/her problems. Even though liver disease is still
very common, the steady increase of liver disease is not necessarily due to
alcohol consumption at a young age, but increases in binge drinking and more
alcohol consumption in people’s daily diets. Bottom line, the better we educate;
the better we can prevent problems like liver disease and alcohol dependence.
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