Drinking in high school is what is regarded as a nationwide problem. The thing is, most high school students do drink alcohol at one point or another during their 4 years of schooling. Is it a problem? Other than the fact that it is illegal, does drinking in high school pose a risk to the students? And what is the solution to this problem, if there is in fact one? While the answers of these questions can greatly vary, I am going to try and answer them to the best of my abilities.
Is high school drinking a problem?
If you believe that since most students go through high school and do drink at one point or another, then the answer to your question is yes. However, you need to look deeper into the question. To do this, I’m going to talk about my second question.
Does drinking in high school pose a risk to the students?
The only time that drinking in high school would pose a risk to students is if a) they were drinking on school nights, or skipping school to drink or b) they were uninformed about alcohol, and were drinking too much. The first problem is difficult to avoid if the student gets in a bad habit of doing this, but they could avoid that problem by being educated about drinking, perhaps in courses at school or even by parents. The third risk it could pose is if the student is driving drunk, which is just a really, really bad idea. In this case, the student needs to be severally disciplined, such as a loss of license.
What is the solution?
21 is the oldest worldwide age to drink alcohol. The majority of countries require you to be 18 to drink, and you never hear about those people having problems. Therefore, I propose that the drinking age be lowered to 19. Why not 18? Well, 18 year olds in high school would mean that they can buy alcohol for 14 year old freshmen. Therefore, the age needs to be 19 so that college drinking would actually be legal, and it would be avoided in high school. In all honesty, if you are in high school, you probably wish that you could legally drink. But even if it were legal, you know that’d you still probably have the same problems as if it weren’t legal. Getting alcohol is easy, but what about finding a place to drink? If you were 15 and could legally drink, do you still think that your parents would let you? In their home?
It’s fun, and doing it in high school isn’t really bad if you know how to control it, but save your drinking years for college, because those will be really fun.
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One Response
Chturga
January 18th, 2009 at 7:46 am
1For the most part I would agree with this. The primary reason listed for not allowing people under 21 (in the US) to drink is health related. However; countries that have a drinking age of 18 do not have statistically different health risks from those that have a drinking age of 21. Add this too the fact that at 18 in the US one is allowed to vote, get married, enter into legal contracts, enlist in the armed forces and die for ones country, and for all other purposes to be considered “wise enough to be thought of as an adult” they ought to be wise enough to decide when enough is enough when it comes to alcohol consumption. So… if for practical purposes 19 is better than 18 alright, lets let them drink… it only seems fair.
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