New Minimum Drinking Age

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer notes that on July 17th 1984, congress passed The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, which dictates that each state must legislate and enforce a minimum age requirement of twenty one years to purchase or publicly possess alcohol. Congress has determined that all fifty U.S states are in compliance with the act. The writer maintains that it is time for change and that the states need to lower the drinking age to eighteen. The writer argues that the present laws are unconstitutional, discriminatory in nature, ineffective, and ultimately do more harm then good. The writer concludes that the laws are un-American and need to be changed to better reflect the high value that America places on freedom and fairness in the United States.

From the Paper:

"According to the United states if a woman goes out to dinner and consumes two glasses of wine, then goes home for the evening and consumes two more over the course of the night, she is binge drinking. From a practical standpoint however, this woman would most likely not even feel the effects of the alcohol, let alone be intoxicated.
"According to the clinical definition of binge drinking, not the one presented in the news media and most commonly associated with the term, only a mere 0.05 percent of college students binge drink each year. Were the same statistics to be applied to the more commonly believed definition of binge drinking the percentage of binge drinking college students would show to be forty-four percent, clearly a huge misrepresentation of fact, however, that is the number that is most commonly cited."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Barr, A. Drink: A Social History of America. New York: Carroll & Graff, 1999 p. 268; International Center for Alcohol Policies. Drinking Age Limits. Washington, DC: International Center for Alcohol Policies, 1998
• Bureau of Alcoholic Rehabilitation. Shattering Myths About Drinking. Tallahassee, Florida: Department of Health and Rehabilative Services, 1973, p. 11.
• Dimeff, Linda A., Kilmer, Jason, Baer, John S., and Marlatt, G. Alan. To the editor. Journal of the American Medical Association, 1998, 273(24), 1903-1904.
• Engs, Ruth C., and Hanson, David J. Reactance theory: A test with collegiate drinking. Psychological Reports, 1989, 64, 1083-1086.
• Farchi, G., Fidanza, F., Mariotti, S., and Menotti, A. Alcohol and mortality in the Italian r ural cohorts of the Seven Countries Study. International Journal of Epidemiology, 1995, 27(7), 74-81.

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