Readers Question: Evaluate the case that raising the legal drinking age to 21 will be more effective than other methods for reducing the harmful effects of alcohol. (15 marks) AQA unit 3
- Things to avoid: explaining all the costs of alcohol and negative externality diagrams. The question is about the best methods to reduce alcohol consumption. Basically, the question is: what is best way to reduce alcohol?
Raising the drinking age to 21 will reduce consumption amongst young people because it will be harder to buy alcohol. Also, young people are the most likely group to misuse alcohol; e.g. drinking to excess, which causes accidents, death and health problems. If people start drinking later in life, they may be more likely to drink in moderation and not get addicted at an early age.
However, it will still be possible for young people to drink at home. People will find ways to avoid the legislation e.g. asking older people to buy for them. Nevertheless, it will be more difficult. For example, a 16 year old may not be able to get away with drinking in a pub anymore.
This policy doesn’t address the underlying problem of why people want to drink to excess. For that education may be a better solution; education could help to explain the dangers of excess drinking and therefore encourage young people to drink moderation.. However, previous education policies have not seemed to be very effective. Young people don’t want to hear lectures from the government about the dangers of alcohol.
Other Solutions
Higher taxes increase the cost of alcohol and may have a significant effect in reducing demand amongst young people, who have lower disposable incomes. If demand is reduced by say 20% this may reduce many of the problems of over-consumption. This policy also raises revenue for the government. But, on the other hand, it may increase the incentive to import low duty alcohol from abroad. Demand for alcohol may also be inelastic and not effective in stopping consumption.
In practise there is very little that the government can do to change social and individual attitudes to alcohol, which is the root cause of most alcohol abuse.
In US legal drinking age is 21. They still have many alcohol related problems, but, it is significantly more difficult for young people to regularly drink alcohol.
What do you think – should alcohol be illegal for under 21s?
24 comments ↓
[...] See also: Should Legal age of alcohol consumption be raised to 21? [...]
I think the legal drinking age should be increased to 21 years. Recently there have been far too many violent incidents amongst 18-20 year old which have been either alcohol induced or drug induced or even both.
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Dolly
Alcoholism Treatment
i dnt think it should be!
pushing the age to 21 has nothing to do with underage drinking, The Goverment should be spending more time and money into tacking underage drinking, also it wont stop underage drinking, also it wont stop under age drinking.
so many teenagers from 14 – 17 are throwing away there lives all because they think its cool there getting wasted, and also because they havent been informed at a younger age before they drink of the consequensas. How ever changing the legal drinking age to 21 has nothing to do with underage drinking, it could just make criminals o 18-20 year olds, what impact does the “legal” drinking age have on the behaviour of 14 – 17 year old, why would you want to expand the behaviour to 18, 19 and 20 year olds.
The goverment should send more time and money on the issue to tackel and overcome underage drinking such as more in-school speakers to show and inform us the effects o drinking at a young age, more addvertisment in the street, in school, at clubs, in doctors and in alcohol stores of graphic pictures.
Changing the legal age to 21 will not stop underage drink it will just extend underage drinking to adults of 18, 19 and 20 years of age. 50% of alcohol consumed by underage drinkers was supplied by there parents.
I dont think raising the legal drinking age to 21 would work. Its 18 right now and we have younger teenagers going out and getting drunk illegally. So if its raised to 21 we would just have 18, 19 and 20 year olds getting drunk illegally. It doesnt matter about the age. Its the attitude of the individual and peer pressure. Also why is it that we foucs on teenagers being the problem when talking about alcohol consumption problems? I have seen programmes on binge drinking and there is someone going out for a night with the police observing what they do and watching the binge drinkers falling about in the street and it is always adults in their 20s and 30s they see. We need to stop focusing on teeagers being the problem with alcohol consumption and think more about adults being a bad influence on teenagers. Also there is no point trying to solve this problem through education. If children are exposed to alcohol at home and alot of children are, what they learn at school wont make a difference. We are more likely to mimic our parents than listen to someone telling us the dangers of excess alcohol consumption.
i think changing the age of drinking from 18 to 21 won’t work as teenagers today stil drink no matter what. Teenagers who are underage wont stop drinking because of the raise.
there is no point
Dont do it!
im 14 and i drink at the weekend. I agree with what most people have said. putting the age up to 21 wont stop me or any other teenagers drinkin. Yes it may be harder for us to buy it but we’ll just do wot we do now – stand on street corners and ask random people, or parents or older brothers or sisters and other family members. Its just gunna be a waste of time and money. I smoke to and puttin the age up to 18 didnt make a slight bit of difference as i still smoke and everyone else i know smokes to. i also dont agree with the fact the goverment n most other adults seem to think they know what goes through teens minds and know why we drink/smoke/take drugs/break the law etc. Instead making up wierd suggestions themselves why cant they ask us – seein as were the people who r doing it.
I am 18 (legal to drink
), I don’t think increasing the drinking age to 21 will be a positive because some young people (e.g. 14-16 year olds) may think it is more big/hardcore to drink and there will be more of an incentive for them to try it. It will increase the underage drinking levels in the UK, and it will be taking away one of the things that an adult can do. Personally, I think 16 to 17 year olds should be able to drink beer (not cider) in pubs because they can be refused service when they have had too much and it is a less of a problem people (of all ages) drinking on the streets than indoors. The UK is a good country to live in, but it won’t be if we are not treated like adults in a pub until we are 21. The UK goverment should leave the laws just how they are, everytime they change they are usually not for the best. If the alcohol tax is put up, it would be OK for families with good income, but not for thw lower income familes. If the government want to deter under 18s from pubs/clubs, don’t raise the drinking age because that would be unfair on 18-20 year olds, instead I recon pubs/clubs/shops should have a biometric fingerprint ID system (so people can’t share there ID’s with there older friends).
Im 16 at the moment and I drink and smoke . By putting up the legal age for drinking , it wouldn`t make that much of a difference , teens have their ways of getting grog or smokes , although it would be alot harder for us to get into clubs or pubs , but otherwise they should leave the legal age at 18 .
It should be raised to 21.
that is the stupidest thing in the world!!!!!!!!! leave it at 18 u idiots!
To drink and smoke is not good for the body.
Every one who drink and smoke should stop cause is not good.
thank from junior to any one who smoke and drink.
I dont like every one who smoke
no it shouoldnt
I think that its PERFECT raising it to 21!!!!!!!!! TOO many IDIOTS (young ppl) are on the streets like bums and drinking…. So i think it should be raised to 21 and harder enforeced laws should follow!!!!!!!!
this suks that age of drinking is18 it should be 21 lots more innocent people will live
bad thing is that we dont get to live life properly because of these risks
LEAVE the drinking age at 18
LEAVE the drinking age at 18 and it wont stop people from drinking if you change the age to 21
it will make it worse so leave the age
the drinking age should not be raised to 21 because if we want to stop young people from drinking then we shouldnt use bandaid solutions – we need to find out why these people drink. it could be because they have a bad social life and use alcohol to realx themselves and then they are able to talk freely and socialise like normal people. or it could be because they have a bad home life with parents because their parents are always at work and they never have anyone to come home to and dont get much love and support from their parents. then they use alcohol to completely forget about everything that is happening in their lives.
also if we raised the alcohol limit to 21 then people who already drink that are under this limit will be addicted and want to break the law, and this means they will be sent to jail and this will fill up our prisons and not leave room for more inprtant crimes such as murder and robberies.
also bars will lose money because as statistics show, most of the people who enter bars are aged from 18-21. so this means that bars will only make half the amout they normally do.
also there will be lots of protests from people who previously drink
there will be increased sales for blackmarkets, and im sure we sone want this
teenagers will be tempted to lie to their parents and drink secretly, and the parents of these people will not approve of what their child is doing.
all the reasons above is why the drinking age limit should not be raised to 21.
(p.s. i am only 11 years old but this research is for a school debate)
ya mum!
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