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When at a party, a student sees another teenager drinking a beer. Thinking nothing of it, the teenager picks up a large bottle labeled Vodka and beings to chug the contents of the bottle. The alcohol rushes through her body and she suddenly has a sense of feeling free and letting loose. The next thing the teenage girl remembers is waking up in a hospital bed to her mother crying by her bed side. The only thing her mom could say was “Honey, please wake up. Please be okay, I want you to be okay. Please do not ever make this mistake again. Please, Please.” The night before, her child drank an entire 750mL bottle of 80-proof Vodka then decided to drive home from the party. On her trip home, she had driven off the shoulder of the road, into a tree where she was lunged from her vehicle. She almost died that night, but she did not. Alcohol abuse leads to consequences that affect the body of teenagers, pose legal troubles, and can kill.
According to How Stuff Works, “alcohol can be made through three different processes: fermentation and distillation, chemical modifications of fossil fuels, and the chemical combination of hydrogen with carbon monoxide” (How Stuff Works). The alcohol most commonly drank by individuals is made through the processes of fermentation, or the process of metabolizing of a sugar into an alcohol or acid, and distillation, or the process of purifying “mash” into the essential alcohol. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention classifies a standard drink as “any drink containing 0.6 ounces of pure alcohol” (CDC). The amounts of a standard a standard drink can measure to twelve ounces of beer or wine coolers, eight ounces of malt liquors, five ounces of wine, or one and a half ou...
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The article “Adolescent Brain Development and Underage Drinking in the United States: Identifying Risks of Alcohol Use in College Populations” written by Marisa Silveri, PhD, aims to emphasize the the negative behavioral consequences with underage alcohol use. Silveri is a highly decorated professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who has been studying the neurobiology of brain development and consequences of alcohol and drug abuse using preclinical and clinical models for two decades. Her substantial background in psychology and neurobiology make her a highly credible source, and improves the author’s chance of making the point really stick. The article is easy to follow, and split up in subcategories that each cover a specific point the author is trying to make. Professor Silveri, with great credibility, uses logic and also emotional appeal to effectively convince the reader that alcohol use affects the brain negatively, and the importance to discourage the excessive consumption of alcohol by adolescents.
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Teenage drinking is something that goes on every day. No matter how many videos you show to kids about drinking they will still drink. Surveys show that the average teen seventeen and up spends $475.00 a year on liquor, mostly beer; that's more than books, soda, coffee, juice and milk combined. Most parents don't know about teenage drinking unless they catch their kids doing it. Parents usually say "oh, my my kid would never do that ", and they're the ones whose kids probably drink more that the average teen. One might ask, how do kids get alcohol? Alcohol is almost as easy to get as a carton of milk, except a teen has to get someone older like a friend, brother or even someone off of the street to purchase it. Another way underage teens get alcohol is a fake I.D. A lot of stores don't care, they just need to ask for an I.D. because they are being watched by security cameras. No matter what city your are in, one in every five stores will sell beer to a minor. If stores stop selling to minors they would lose a lot of business. Looking at the surveys I took at Lincoln on this topic it can been seen what teens think about teenage drinking. The results were shocking! The first Question I asked was "Have you ever drank alcohol?" Of the students surveyed, 16% said no and 84% said yes. The second question was, "How often do you drink?"
According to Andrew Herman, “Each year, 14,000 die from drinking too much. 600,000 are victims of alcohol related physical assault and 17,000 are a result of drunken driving deaths, many being innocent bystanders” (470). These massive numbers bring about an important realization: alcohol is a huge issue in America today. Although the problem is evident in Americans of all ages, the biggest issue is present in young adults and teens. In fact, teens begin to feel the effects of alcohol twice as fast as adults and are more likely to participate in “binge-drinking” (Sullivan 473). The problem is evident, but the solution may be simple. Although opponents argue lowering the drinking age could make alcohol available to some teens not mature enough to handle it, lowering the drinking age actually teaches responsibility and safety in young adults, maintains consistency in age laws, and diminishes temptation.
A lot of the time, teens think it is ‘cool’ to drink because everyone else does it. Almost every television show that young people watch have some underage substance abuse, leading adolescents to believe that it can’t be that bad. While society plays a big part in this huge problem, both teens and parents need to learn that there can be severe consequences from as little as one drink. Allowing them to think this kind of behavior is acceptable will haunt them for the rest of their lives, even if they are not alcohol related. Believing that such behavior is acceptable now will lead them to bad decision-making skills in the future when faced with an ethical decision. Teens need to know the major effects can come from underage drinking before going to that party or when being pressured into something they may not be willing to participate in. It is obvious that the long and short-term effects of alcohol abuse can be easily avoided by getting educated and thinking before engaging in any self-destructive
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The national minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) of The United States is twenty-one and it is ineffective; therefore it should be lowered to eighteen. The minimum legal drinking age does not prevent underage consumption of alcohol. Lowering the age of consumption can possibly reduce the number of injuries do to underage drinking. The legal age of adulthood in the United States is eighteen, so all adults should be able to make their own decision to drink or not. “Although many believe that anyone under the age of 21 is prohibited from consuming alcohol in the United States, underage drinking is allowed in 29 states if done on private premises with parental consent, 25 states if for religious purposes, and 11 states if for educational purposes.” ("Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered from 21 to a Younger Age?").
Introduction: The legal drinking age in America is 21, in the past it differed by state ranging from 18, 19 to 20. Through the years it’s changed and after the Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 where it went from 18 to 21 and stayed there. Throughout the years it has gone back and forth with discussion.
As binge drinking continues to increase every year so does the fatalities caused by car accidents, teen pregnancy, rape, and homicides. Obviously there is no way to completely stop binge drinking but if we could decrease the occurrence then we could make a difference. I strongly believe that in order to do this we need to make the consequences more severe. Teens get off too easily and that’s why they continue to drink irresponsibly. I also think that if teens knew about it before hand they would think twice about binge drinking.
As a result of underage drinking, 5,000 adolescents under the age of 21 die annually due to intoxication (taking motor vehicle crashes, homicides, suicides, and other injuries while intoxicated into consideration) (paragraph 2). Later in life, underage drinkers are more likely to develop alcoholism, poor performance in school, and risky sexual behavior (paragraph 43). Although this research is not opposed to my argument, there is an importance to acknowledging it as proof of dangerous, underage drinking occurring significantly regardless of whether it is illegal. More importantly, this research stems from adolescents drinking without the supervision of adults and in uncontrolled quantities. Since adolescents must wait a long period of time to drink legally, I believe they fear they must take advantage of drinking opportunities by excess drinking and risk of safety due to their restriction to alcohol. Based on this mindset, I believe exposure to alcohol at a younger age in controlled environments would not only decrease underage drinking in large quantities, but injury and death related to intoxication, as
Teen alcohol addiction - Is there any hope for a teenager who wants to get his or her life straightened out?