“The Patriot” takes an inside look at benefits and consequences to lowering the drinking age.  Here is the con side.  To read the pro, click here.

Underage drinking is running rampant throughout the country and Harford County is far froman exception. More and more kids are getting their hands on alcohol when they are incapable of handling its effects. If the drinking age would be lowered, the problems would get worse and be even more harmful to society.

Underage drinking is a serious problem. Today, it’s common for students in high school to have at least tasted alcohol before. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention stated that in 2009, 42% of high school students had drank at least some alcohol within 30 days of taking the survey.

 Drinking is common among most high school juniors and seniors and, in some cases, sophomores and even some freshmen with Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse revealing that 40.6% of ninth graders reported current use of alcohol. This means that people as young as 14 can have access to alcohol.

This is not saying that it is easy for a 14-year-old to get alcohol. They can’t buy it for themselves and they don’t attend school with anyone over the age of 21, making obtaining alcohol more difficult. These students must have connections to people over the age of 21.  However, it is still possible for alcohol to be obtained. If the drinking age were to be lowered it would become even easier for kids of this age to gain access to alcohol.

Most people already think of drinking as a natural part of college, although most college students don’t reach the legal drinking age until around their junior year. However, freshmen and sophomores have easy access to alcohol by being surrounded by other students who are over 21. The easy connection to people who are able to buy alcohol makes drinking much more convenient and likely. The age gap has lessened drastically, in comparison with high school, making these connections much more possible and probable.

If the drinking age were to be lowered to 18, the already troubling problem of underage drinking would only intensify. With many high school students turning 18 during their senior year, kids as young as 14 could have easy access to people who could legally obtain alcohol.

Just as this problem has extended from college to high school, it could easily extend from high school to middle school. Kids in sixth grade could find themselves having an easier time of gaining access to alcohol.

This chain of association is what has spread alcohol through the underage population. College students have easy access to high school students and these students have easy access to middle school students, and the chain continues. The younger people get, the less likely it is that they will be able to handle being permitted to consume  alcohol.

Many 18-year-olds already have easy access to alcohol and lowering the drinking age would only make alcohol more convenient. The 18-year-olds who really want to drink will find a way to do so clearly without much threat from law enforcement, otherwise underage drinking would not be such a problem in our society.

Drinking does not benefit young people.  As a practice it often leads to young people making poor decisions which they would not otherwise make if they were not drinking.  These decisions are often life-changing and have serious consequences.

Young people are not yet ready to face these consequences and their problems would not even arise if drinking weren’t involved. Even older individuals make horrible decisions while under the influence of alcohol. Alcohol Alert found that 31% of car accidents in Maryland in 2008 were alcohol related. Alcohol leads to reckless decisions which many older individuals have trouble handling, much less those under the eage of 21 who are still learning and developing.

Young people tend to be more prone to over consuming alcohol as it is a new experience which also breaks the rules.  By the time an individual reaches 21, they harbor a greater potential for safe consumption of alcohol that does not put them at risk for serious harm.

It would be ridiculous to think that lowering the drinking age would benefit society in any way. This would only worsen the problem by making these underage drinkers even younger. The drinking age should remain 21, not to prevent underage drinking, but to prevent this problem from worsening and even more heavily polluting society.

Lindsay Powell is a Reporter for the “The Patriot” and jcpatriot.com.