Hello again bloggers! This post is supposed to provide my theory as to why the drinking age became so “contentious” in the first place. Well… let’s start with history of drinking alcohol. According to this website that alcohol has been around for tens of thousands of years and has only gotten more popular over time. Therefore, the issue is prevalent and has been around for awhile. Let’s consider another fact, people like to drink, and a lot of people do it (some people drink legally and others do drink illegally). It is becoming a common trend that underage drinkers are participating in bad drinking habits. Thus, this ongoing battle of lowering the drinking age to 18 or keeping it at 21 is just a continuous and vicious cycle because of all the gray areas and contradictions (mentioned here: “…double standard between 18-year-olds being able to vote, sign contracts, serve on juries or enlist in the military, but who are then denied the ability to legally drink alcohol”). One major issue with the debate is that it has been proven that raising the drinking age to 21 has decreased alcohol related car fatalities. On the other hand, the belief that lowering it to 18 will decrease all alcohol related deaths in general is just a hypothesis, it has not yet been proven, and some people just do not want to take that chance. Personally, I believe that people are always going to have their opinions on this subject and it does not matter if the government continuously changes the age or they never change it this argument is still going to continue.Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Theory Post!
Hello again bloggers! This post is supposed to provide my theory as to why the drinking age became so “contentious” in the first place. Well… let’s start with history of drinking alcohol. According to this website that alcohol has been around for tens of thousands of years and has only gotten more popular over time. Therefore, the issue is prevalent and has been around for awhile. Let’s consider another fact, people like to drink, and a lot of people do it (some people drink legally and others do drink illegally). It is becoming a common trend that underage drinkers are participating in bad drinking habits. Thus, this ongoing battle of lowering the drinking age to 18 or keeping it at 21 is just a continuous and vicious cycle because of all the gray areas and contradictions (mentioned here: “…double standard between 18-year-olds being able to vote, sign contracts, serve on juries or enlist in the military, but who are then denied the ability to legally drink alcohol”). One major issue with the debate is that it has been proven that raising the drinking age to 21 has decreased alcohol related car fatalities. On the other hand, the belief that lowering it to 18 will decrease all alcohol related deaths in general is just a hypothesis, it has not yet been proven, and some people just do not want to take that chance. Personally, I believe that people are always going to have their opinions on this subject and it does not matter if the government continuously changes the age or they never change it this argument is still going to continue.
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I agree that the debate will always continue to be in the attention of the public. This topic in particular is debated because it affects not only the individuals who drink but those surrounding them when they do activities that risk the lives of others(aka drinking and driving). It seems that there is no happy medium. What do you think would need to happen for both sides to be contnet with the drinking age? Does lowering it really affect as many people as it would appear to or are people just so opposed to change that the drinking age needs to stay at 21?
ReplyDeleteThose are some great questions that you have brought to my attention darkmattertheorizing… Thank you. The first one you have asked about what will there need to be for both sides to be content is an extremely hard question to answer. Like I have mentioned in previous blog entries and in this one I really believe that neither side is ever going to be content no matter what the outcome is of this debate. However, I would like to believe that if the drinking age did end up getting lowered to 18 and positive outcomes came out of that decision, then maybe people on the opposing side of the debate would not mind as much. As far as your second question goes it is also hard to say if lowering the drinking age would affect that many people or not. Right now it is just kind of an experimental theory in itself that lowering the drinking age would decrease the amount of alcohol related deaths and bad drinking habits.
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