While Laura Dean-Mooney presents a valid case with
her statistics in this article I have to disagree. What she fails to realize is
that in countries with a very young or no drinking age there is a significantly
lower binge drinking rate as well as alcohol related deaths. There is a very large difference in the lifestyles of European teens versus their American counterparts, we drive more often and at a younger age, thus putting us at more of a risk for drunk driving. However, they are more responsible because they were taught about alcohol in a different way.
Alcohol is a taboo
subject in most American households. Both of my parents come from European
homes and that has reflected the way we discuss alcohol. My mother believes in
no drinking age, she was allowed access to alcohol in her home as an adolescent
and never resulted to binge drinking. Why? Because it was always there. There
is a national stigma floating around that if you drink alcohol you’re by
default cool, we get this from the high drinking age. Teens especially want to
seem older and more mature, resulting in risky behaviors reserved for older
people. In many other countries the binge drinking rate is lower because of
everyone’s ability to get alcohol, thus taking away its “special” qualities and
making it commonplace.
Even thought there has been a decrease in alcohol related deaths since the minimum drinking age was raised to 21, the rate of binge drinking and underage drinking has gone up exponentially. Even though the drinking age is higher that does nothing for the prevention, teens are just finding more and more unsafe and illegal ways around it. Having a drinking age of 21 is just putting more teens at risk for alcohol related deaths and injuries.
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