The Drinking Age Should Be Lowered, Fast

Bridgette Baer

Professor Nina Uppal

ENG 1520

11 April 2016

From 21 to 18

As an American, when you turn eighteen years old, you’re legally allowed to enlist in the military, get married, buy tobacco, and have the right to vote. With having these responsibilities under your belt, many would assume the age to drink alcohol would be 18, but in America, you are not allowed to legally drink alcohol until you are 21. As many people turn 18 and enter adulthood, they should be able to make their own decisions about alcohol consumption. It should not be up to the government to dictate whether what age is appropriate to drink legally at, or let alone tell an adult what he or she can/cannot consume. From college parties, painful break-ups, the stress of

Tucker. I found this article on Newsweek.com, and found it to be resourceful. This website has many articles dealing with the upcoming election, and other news that was parallel with a similar news site, CNN. Tucker has written many articles for this website, and also a publisher for Laissez Faire Books. The audience intended are young adults, who are either 18 or in their 20’s. This piece of writing displayed the reality of underage drinking among adults, and explained in detail how young adults are being rebellious, getting away with drinking under 21, consequences they face, and movements that have been taken to lower the drinking age. His main claim is that the drinking age should be lowered to 18 years old. “Most of the rest of the world has settled on 18 for liquor and 16 for beer and wine” (Tucker). So what is America waiting for? America is one of few countries with the highest drinking age, according to Tucker. He organized his writing by the reality of young adults drinking, (no matter how young) to the statistics of majority of other countries having lowered drinking ages, to movements that have been taken into actions to help lower the legal drinking age. Since Tucker is a publisher for Lassiez Faire Books, and writes many other articles, he is projected to be quite intelligent, and therefore very credible. He builds his logos by backing up his claim with

I located my last article on CNN, “Should the U.S. lower the drinking age?” and it was written by Brandon Griggs. Griggs is a senior producer with CNN Digital. The audience of this article also are adults. This piece of writing discusses many opinions of professors of different universities, and how many of them agree the age shall remain at 21 (supporting each opinion with hard facts). Griggs states “When the law was raised to 21, alcohol-related deaths for young people decreased, when the drinking age was lowered, deaths increased.” To decrease the number of deaths in young drivers, we need to educate young adults to warn and show them the devastating and potentially fatal effects of drinking and driving. Griggs builds his ethos by being a highly educated, senior producer for CNN. CNN is another high-profile news channel. It is reliable, updating individuals with the latest, most important information every day. He also quotes and includes highly rated people, similar to my other articles. His logos is solid is also solid, backing up his claims with facts from many different credible sources. The writer did not invoke any emotional response to