Alcohol: Should we lower the drinking age to 18 - Research Paper Example

However, the opponents argue that drinking age at 18 is not a good idea due to the fact that teens have not attained the right age to take alcohol responsibly. They explain that drinking at the age below 21 increases the rate of road accidents and health issues. Based on my view, drinking age in United States should not be lowered to 18 because of health related issues and safety concerns such as motor vehicle accidents. However, those issues are there despite the actions taken by federal states to maintain the drinking age above 18.

The next paragraphs explain my argument. According to “National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism”, the studies conducted in the year 2009 showed that close to 10.4 million teens at the age of 12 to 20 engaged on alcohol abuse just by taking few sips. Their drinking habits increase as they attain adult age. The studies shows that close to half of the teens at the age of 15 have taken alcohol. As they move closer to the set age for drinking close to 70% will have had at least a drink or more.

In addition, teens drink less as compared to adults. However, they drink too much when they get a chance in a short time than adults. This is what is called binge drinking, a situation where an individual drink too much within a short time probably two hours. Concentration of alcohol in blood rises to 0.08g/dl. “National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism”, shows that heavy drinking is dangerous and causes health risk and threat to the safety such as car accidents. Additionally, binge drinking raises alcohol content in blood after four drinks and five drinks in women and men respectively.

Maintaining such state of alcohol consumption is a serious detrimental to the liver and other organs in the body such as brain. According to “National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism,” alcohol consumption damages the brain. Explanation of this is based on the research