Underage Drinking

Recent report concluded that the cost of alcohol use by youth was $53 billion in 1996, including $19 billion from traffic crashes and $29 billion from violent crime. Acute consequences of underage drinking include unintentional death and injury associated with driving or engaging in other risky tasks after drinking, homicide and violence, suicide attempts, sexual assault, risky sexual behavior, and vandalism and property damage. In addition, these consequences appear to be more severe for those who start drinking at a young age. Although alcohol-related youth motor vehicle fatalities have decreased substantially over the past decade or so, youth are still overrepresented in alcohol-related fatal crashes compared with the older population. While only 7 percent of licensed drivers in 2000 were aged 15 to 20, they represented approximately 13 percent of drivers involved in fatal crashes who had been drinking.

Negatives of Drinking

This is a very arguable topic. Several people would say if you lower the drinking age to 18 crime rate and violence rates would be higher. People also say then there would be a lot more under age drinking and driving going on.

Positives of Drinking

Drinking helps people to be happy when they are down and instead of using illegal drugs alcohol is legal. If the drinking age were to be lowered to 18 a lot of things would be better. For example if they lower the age to 18 a lot more kids wouldn't be arrested for underage drinking. At the age of 18 you are considered an adult so why not just let them drink if they are an adult? Pretty much everyone knows there is always underage drinking going on in college and in high school so if the drinking age is lowered then the rate of crime would be lowered. A person that is 18 is already an adult and should be responsible so I wouldn't think there would be much underage drinking and driving.

College Drinking

The amount of underage drinking in high school and college keeps increasing over time. In 2001 the number of people with DWI's(Driving While Intoxicated) increased from 2.3 million to 2.8 million people. Per year there are about 670,00 students between the ages of 18 and 24 who are assaulted or raped by other college students who are under the influence of alcohol. A lot more students are starting to binge drink which is the modern definition of drinking alcoholic beverages with the primary intention of becoming intoxicated by heavy consumption of alcohol over a short period of time.