Should We Lower the Drinking Age?

TINA PASCO

Executive director, Los Angeles County MADD

I am not in favor of lowering the drinking age because it has been proved time and time again that the highest alcohol-related death rates affect those who are between 15 and 24 years old.

These are death rates for young adults who were drinking and driving. These young adults are still learning driving skills and decision-making skills. And when you mix in mind-altering drugs such as alcohol, it further impairs those skills.

Since the drinking age was raised from 18 to 21, thousands of young adults lives are changed every year nationally. You can’t argue against a measure that has done nothing but save lives.

If the drinking age were lowered, you would see a large rise in death rates and injuries.

Society is inundated with alcohol advertising in movies and television programs that glamorize alcohol. Young adults seem to think that they will look older or sexier if they have a cigarette or a drink in their hands.

Alcohol is a drug that has no positive side effects. I have been working for MADD for 17 years and have spoken at many high schools where they had lost two or three students in a drunk driving accident in the course of a year. You can’t give someone back their life or change it back to right for somebody who has been struck and is now a paraplegic or an amputee. You cannot give back solid healthy brain activity when a person has permanent head trauma that happened in a split second. Lives are changed forever.

How important can a drink possibly be that you would be willing to give up so much of your life and take a risk of forcing someone else to give it up because of your recklessness? If you lowered the drinking age, there would be an increase in that risk-taking behavior.