Persuasive Speech On Lowering The Drinking Age

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Attention Getter: In January 2017 an eighteen year old freshman at Miami University died from acute alcohol intoxication according to the September 24, 2017 Cincinnati Enquirer article by Kate Murphy entitled Miami students start new year with arrest, hospital trips. Tragically, this has not been an isolated incident, as more and more young adults succumb to the effects of binge drinking. (Murphy 1)Underage drinking has become a deadly practice for young adults that may be attributed to the limitations placed on legal drinking for eighteen to twenty-one year olds. Background information: Drinking too much alcohol is indisputably a problem everywhere in the world. In the United States, concerned citizens fought to control alcohol consumption and succeeded in the initiation of Prohibition in 1919. Prohibition, however, only lasted until 1933.(cite?) People were not willing to give up drinking alcohol and Prohibition only made drinking more dangerous because people did so illegally and underground. In the article, Is It Time to Lower The Drinking Age to 18?, Wil Fulton describes how …show more content…

Based on a study by MIT, the human brain is not fully developed until the age of twenty-five (Simpson 1). There is little to no difference in brain development between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, making drinking alcohol at eighteen not harmful. At any age, excessive drinking can be detrimental to your health, but an occasional drink has proven no health concerns. Society also trusts us to perform other activities when our brains are not completely developed. At sixteen you are allowed to drive and at eighteen you are a fully functioning adult. Whether someone is mature or not does not depend on their age. Someone at age fifteen could be more mature than someone who is

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