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The Pros of a Higher Drinking Age

In: Social Issues

Submitted By carlosfruiz
Words 628
Pages 3
The age in which someone is allowed to drink is a very controversial issue in the United States. While there are a lot of people who are satisfied with the current drinking age of twenty-one, there are still those who want the drinking age to be lowered to eighteen. States should keep the drinking age at twenty-one because it will prevent damage to brain development usually caused by alcohol and would also keep alcohol related accidents like drunk driving to a minimum. Keeping the drinking age at twenty-one would prevent alcohol from damaging certain parts of the developing brain. Studies show that the brain does not stop developing until the early twenties. The drinking of alcohol can permanently damage parts of the developing brain. For example, the pre-frontal cortex, this is the part of the brain that takes the longest to mature and it controls our learning ability and reasoning. Because we depend so much on these brain functions, this can be an exceptional loss. The damage is more likely to affect underage drinkers because this part of the brain has not fully developed yet. Early drinking can also damage parts of the brain that are responsible for planning, memories, and attention. All of there are crucial because they are necessary in anyone’s academics. Students who abuse drinking at a younger age tend to not do as well as those who do not drink at all. The current drinking age of twenty-one has greatly decreased the amount of alcohol related accidents from the ages of eighteen through twenty. Since the drinking age was raised to twenty-one, driving fatalities have decreased by thirteen percent among the age group of eighteen through twenty year olds. In addition, studies have also shown that since the age was changed to twenty-one, there has been a decline in the amount of drunken driving incidents across the nation. Furthermore, one of the age groups

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