Thursday, December 3, 2009

To be or Not to be?

While doing a research paper on lowering the drinking age, I decided this topic would still interest me and I could dig deeper and find more controversies on this topic. I came across a website that is from the 60 minute show and it is on the debate of lowering the drinking age. The article talks about how on college campuses the presidents believe that this MLDA 21 is not helping, it's actually hurting. The article goes more into depth talking about a boy who is in a fraternity, at 18 years old, and how the leaders made them drink x amount of alcohol to be blood brothers.  The college presidents are concerned either way that binge drinking is going to be the main problem with alcohol.  Binge drinking is already the number one problem in which MLDA 21 does not address.  The main idea MLDA 21 is addressing is to minimize the amount of alcohol related car accidents, and there is nothing to do with the binge drinking.
The other website I stumbled across was the DWI website, and like I said above, it addresses only the drinking and driving portion of the situation.  The article debates on how when the drinking age was lowered to 18 a rise in car accidents started to show up. 
While reading both of these articles I do believe the more persuasive one would have to be the DWI website about not lowering the drinking age. This website has cited sources and actually has statistics as compared to the website on the 60 minute show just addressing college students.  I do see a different side to this controversy now and completely understand where the MLDA 21 comes from.  I also still have a tough time with the binge drinking.  
The only argument I would add would go along with the binge drinking I still believe that the this is a number one aspect the law makers have to take into mind. Although the drinking age is 21, there are 18 year olds off in college drinking themselves to a black out night and waking up wondering what happened. Obviously this MLDA 21 law is not working, and either the law needs to be cracked down more, or the officials need to fix the law.

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