Underage drinking is becoming more and more of a problem in the United States. Teenagers are recklessly bingeing on alcohol every opportunity they get, even though the law says that no person under the age of 21 is allowed to purchase or consume the beverage. Then why is it so easy to find a party with alcohol on any given weekend during the school year?.
Every college term, there is at least one story about a group of students who risk alcohol poisoning for rituals such as "21 for 21", a shot of liquor for every birthday that they've ever had, or students who drink too much at a "pre-game party" and are killed when they stumble over the ledge of a balcony. Nearly all of these stories are put into local and sometimes even national newspapers to shock the American public. We know underage drinking is a serious problem in the United States, but what can we do to fix it? Researchers have put together several different conflicting approaches to solving teenage rebellion against the law. .
By setting the legal drinking age at 21, the highest drinking age limit in the world, the United States has set up a prohibition of alcohol for all people 20 and younger. When this was done in the past on a national level for the prohibition of alcohol in general, it created mass chaos. The new law could not be enforced and caused regular law abiding citizens to break the law. Breaking one law soon led to breaking other laws, usually more drastic than underage drinking. The recent prohibition of alcohol for people under the age of 20 was supposed to stop the abuse of alcohol, which was primarily seen in this age group. At age 21, people are assumed to be more mature than they were before; therefore being responsible enough to have the .
adult privilege of drinking alcohol. If you think of how much alcohol abuse there is among minors, think of how much worse it could be if minors were able to purchase their own alcohol instead of having to go through someone else.