Cheers, but when?
Alcohol is common in American society people often forget that it’s an addictive drug both psychologically and physiologically. It just seems like any other beverage, it clearly is not. I have made it more than halfway through junior year relatively unscathed. My GPA is pretty much the same year to year, I’m improving in athletics and I haven’t gone to any party with alcohol. I know some of my peers participate in underage drinking but I refuse to join them. In fact, I refuse to drink in general. I say no to a small glass of wine or champagne when offered to be included in “grownup” customs at holiday dinners. I just raise my glass of water or sprite instead. I don’t want to drink and even if I could, I still wouldn’t. I’ve seen drunk people fall over, slur their speech and act very inappropriately. I never want to be seen that way and I never want to do something I’ll regret. The fact that the human body considers alcohol to be a poison, is enough to keep me dry.
While it may seem harmless, alcohol impairs judgment and motor skills and being a depressant, slows every bodily process down. Drinking in general taxes the body, exasperating other preexisting health conditions and most commonly leads to diseases like pancreatitis and cirrhosis of the liver. Living is a complicated process for the body, why would you make it more difficult by ingesting a substance your body doesn’t like?
The psychological effects of alcohol, to me, are even scarier. Early and excessive drinking also attacks the psyche, leading to a powerful and life altering alcohol addiction. Alcohol will consume your thoughts and essentially act as a dictator in your mind, insisting constantly that you need it. I prefer to be the master of my mind, as the mind is a great servant but a cruel master. I want to be in control of my life, not have alcohol order me around.
Conversely, in 2008, some colleges and universities launched the Amethyst Initiative to campaign for a legal drinking age of eighteen. Supporters of this organization strongly advocate for a legal drinking age of eighteen because it’s the age of legal adulthood. You can vote, serve on jury, live on your own without emancipation, get body modifications, and enlist in the military to name a few liberties gained at that age. If you can make “grownup” decisions, why shouldn’t you be able to consume a “grownup” beverage, like alcohol?
There are many reasons. One is the increased exposure of “drinking culture” to teens under the age of eighteen. Most of the arguments for lowering the drinking age focus on the individual’s wishes not the young people around them. Boston University President Robert A. Brown articulates this point; “The Amethyst Initiative proposes that by lowering the drinking age, colleges will be better able to generate awareness of the risk of excessive alcohol use, I am not convinced this is true, and I worry about the consequences of lowering the age on the large number of teenagers not in college, as well as the environment for students in high school who would experience increased exposure to alcohol.” He’s right, I and other high school students would be more exposed to alcohol and would face more peer pressure to drink if upperclassmen or peers could. By having the law on the younger students side, it reduces the accessibility of alcohol and reinforces their ability to resist peer pressure to drink.
To further help students defy peer pressure, the parents of Samantha Spady, a college student who died from binge drinking, founded the SAM [Student Alcohol Management] Spady Foundation. The organization works to develop peer-to-peer counseling and to raise awareness of the dangers of alcohol. Organizations like the SAM Spady Foundation are necessary because it is different from the typical spiel that teachers or parents give, telling teens not to drink; stories and wisdom of other teens help reinforce these messages. It is also very important to educate people about the high number of alcohol-related deaths of eighteen to twenty-four year olds as they can go unnoticed. For the safety of the majority of the youth, the drinking age should be twenty one. But, I believe it should be even higher than that.
It really should be twenty-five. Neurological studies have shown that the brain is not completely developed at eighteen which was previously thought. Brain development continues into the mid-twenties and even early thirties. Child psychologist, Laverne Antrobus affirms this; “The idea that suddenly at eighteen you’re an adult just doesn’t quite ring true, my experience of young people is that they still need quite a considerable amount of support and help beyond that age.” Of course my fellow teenagers and I need advising, our prefrontal cortices (the part of the brain responsible for logic and reasoning, decision making, regulation of emotions and impulse control) are still developing! Because our brains are growing they are more fragile to alcohol’s effects; our brains do not need a psychoactive drug complicating the process!
The countless number of tragic accidents surrounding underage drinking have proven that the drinking age should not be lowered to eighteen to prevent more losses of young life due to alcohol. Neurological studies have shown the legal drinking age should really be twenty five to help achieve full brain development. Thus, waiting to drink until twenty-five is perfectly fine, even if other people think it’s lame. There is so much pressure from our peers and society in general surrounding alcohol and there are many marketing ploys, images and commercials that suggest a night out drinking is an exciting fantasy. This dreamland is far from reality. With strong arguments on both sides, I doubt there will be a change in the drinking law in the next four years, when I turn twenty one. However, I hope that the Amethyst Initiative does not succeed in their mission and that there is no more loss of life to inspire the creation of organizations like the SAM Spady Foundation.
My sincere hope is that the drinking age is raised to twenty five for the children of my generation and teens are dissuaded from participation in risky behaviors like drinking.