How Underage Drinking Can Be a Social Problem:

Alizon Guerra

Professor Baker

Sociology

June 20, 2015

How underage drinking can be a social problem:

Underage drinking has always been a big argument on how the age limit should be lowered from 21 to 18. In 1919 the 18th amendment prohibited the sale and transportation of alcoholic beverages. Just like today, a lot of people disobeyed the fact that you can’t drink until you’re 21. With that, it made the government want to change the law. In 1933 they changed the 18 amendment to the 21st amendment. The whole point of it was not to get rid of alcohol from everyone but that only adults could use it because adults were more responsible and they thought adults were more capable of handling it. Each individual state was able to choose their own drinking age from 1933 to 1984. Most states chose 21 because they thought it was the right age and you were considered a responsible adult by then. Because of the Vietnam War, between 1970-1975, many states lowered their age of adulthood to 18. Since they lowered that, the drinking age had to be lowered to 18. They were also sending eighteen year olds off to war and people were complaining because they said it was unfair that they were old and responsible enough to be sent off to war but too young to drink alcohol. In 1984 a woman started to fund MADD, which stood for Mothers against drunk driving, did research and proved how drunk driving was getting out of control in America and it was all caused by mostly underage drinkers. It started out small, but later on it became more serious and The National Drinking Age act of 1984 was born. It strictly stated that the drinking age should be raised to 21 and to set sentencing laws against drunk drivers. Ever since that, the drinking age hasn’t lowered again. People have tried to but the government has been real strict about it and hasn’t thought about lowering the age.

I believe underage drinking is a social problem because underage drinking affects your brain. Many teenagers...