The growing social problem of drinking involved more and more young people. With abundance and easy access of alcohol, a large number of underage drinkers increased and engage in binge drinking like college students. Public factors such as the media can be seen as one source where alcohol is projected as tool for celebration, stress-reliever, and overcoming emotional distraught. In an era where the youth is heavily surrounded and influenced by media and the cyberspace, the increasing number of underage drinkers came to be as a result of this influence.
In the American culture, “drinking alcohol marks a transition from youth to childhood” (Jacobs 7). This can be another factor why many teenagers engage in drinking, for they wanted to experience how it is like to be an adult. It served as a transition stage for them and used as a ‘valid’ excuse to be able to drink. On the business aspect, an essential element why teenagers commit to excessive drinking is because of the wide availability and the inexpensiveness of these alcoholic beverages. As the years go by, the prices of these drinks kept going down because the federal and state government do not imposed higher taxes.
From this, it seems like underage drinking is as huge of a problem as with the issue of legal college drinkers. Then, why do the need for proposing a lower drinking age? One may insist further that lowering the drinking age will only legitimize and encourage more youth to engage in binge drinking. Personally, – despite the inevitable questions of doubts – it will be preferable to lower the legal drinking age from 21 to 18 years old. “Why? ” One may ask. This pertains to one my suggestion to instill alcohol education to the youth as early as 18 years old.
First of all, with the presented problem of binge drinking on both underage and legal age drinkers, any laws which aim for prohibition will end up in failure just what happened to the 18th amendment. The idea of alcohol as a transitional stage from youth to adulthood developed the tendency for the families and institutions to establish a ‘wait rule’ for drinking (O’Connell 23). This ‘wait’ rule formulate confusion most especially with regards to what specific age does it entail for someone to be called as an ‘adult.
’ Alcohol education should be implemented both within the public and the private sphere. A teenager who drinks wit the supervision of family members will be able to learn how to control with the consumption. Instilling alcohol responsibility within the family, “is amongst the principal settings in which the consumption of alcohol is both enjoyed and restrained, and that it constitutes the most important natural resource for the prevention and control of excessive consumption” of the youth (Orford and Harwin 7).
It is much safer to learn and regulate drinking in the confines of the home than with the company of the youth’s peers where everyone is eager and aggressive to experiment alcohol to the fullest which can be dangerous. On the other hand, an official and established curriculum should be formulated to be able to bring alcohol education into classrooms. Having this program is the same as having sex education where it is being taught in high school and there is no imposed legal age. Just like sex education, it is not taught to encourage young people to engage with it nor is it for prohibition as well.
Its purpose is to keep the youth well-informed about the consequences of binge drinking and how to drink responsibly (Houghton and Roche 196). In summary, whether or not the legal drinking age will be changed to 18 years old, it will be of little significance since both legal or underage both actively participate in excessive drinking. The favor given to lower the drinking age is for the purpose of implementing alcohol education as early as it can to have more control and responsible drinking habits by the time the youth reaches college.
Drinking among the youth is impossible to remove as it is with removing drinking in America. Drinking can be considered as embedded into the culture of not just America but in other nations of the world. It’s a matter of controlling and decreasing the problem. As stated by Mark Moore of Harvard University, a feasible American society is “with fewer drinking problems-not zero drinking, not unlimited drinking, but some level of drinking with a much lower profile of harmful consequences than we now experience” (Olson and Gerstein 3).
Works cited
Olson, Steve and Dean Gerstein. Alcohol in America. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1985. Jacobs, James. Drunk Driving. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. O’Connell, Mary Ellen. Reducing Underage Drinking. USA: National Academies Press, 2004. Orford, Jim and Judith Harwin. Alcohol and the Family. London: Billing and Sons Limited, 1982. Houghton, Eleni and Ann Roche. Learning About Drinking. Philadelphia, PA: USA: Taylor and Francis, 2001. Forest, James and Kevin Kinser. Higher Education in the United States. California: ABC-CLIO, 2002.