Alcohol and Drinking - America Must Lower the Drinking Age :: Argumentative Persuasive Topics

America Must Lower the Drinking Age In other countries around the world if you are under the age of 21 you can drink alcohol some countries don't even have an age limit, but in America you have to be 21 to buy alcohol. You can go to war and die for your country when you are 18, you can also vote, buy cigarettes, but you can't buy alcohol. One of the main causes of the drinking age being set to 21 was teenagers were getting into car accidents after getting drunk. I am not saying driving under the influence should be legal. What I am saying is there should be more government programs to educate and prevent people from driving intoxicated. More and more people under the age of 21 are experiencing alcohol. "A survey released by the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse (TCADA) found that by the time Texas teenagers are seniors in high school, more than 80% of the teens admit to having some experience with alcohol. The same study found that secondary students say it's easy to get beer, wine or liquor." (qtd. in Westbrook) Texas is a zero tolerance state for underage drinking it has some of the strictest penalties for underage drinking, and if 80% of the teenagers in Texas have had experiences with alcohol that tells me that the campaigns against underage drinking, and zero tolerance programs are not working. Teens are going to drink alcohol at one point of their lives. So instead of spending all this money to prevent teens from drinking maybe it should go toward programs, or educating these teens about alcohol so they can make a informed decision about drinking. There are programs now that educate people under the age of 21 about alcohol. These programs are being implemented in colleges around the country, and are about the choices of using alcohol. "At the University of Virginia they are taking a more of an old-fashioned approach to educating college students about alcohol use. They are using two, two-and-a-half hour courses in class rooms called "Choices". They are boasting high results from this program a total of 75 percent of participants said they planned to reduce how much they drink in the future, while 85 percent indicated they had spoken to a friend." (Altamirano). If these programs have high success rates, I think these programs should be put in high schools as well.