Minimum Legal Drinking Age A Discourse Appraisal

Minimum Legal Drinking Age in America: A Discourse Appraisal You know an issue has evoked large levels of community discussion when interest groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving and rappers like J-kwon are telling us the same thing: teen drinking is very bad. But discussion on the topic tends to vary far more than that. Congress discussed the issue in 1984, with the National Minimum Drinking Age Act: an act that withheld federal highway funding from states without a minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) of 21. The motives behind the act can’t be summed up in just residual American puritan values; it wasn’t aiming to ruin teenaged fun, but reduce deaths by drunk drivers and cut down on alcohol dependence and abuse. It’s been over 30†¦show more content†¦The United States has the world’s highest MLDA, and many citizens are content to keep it that way. Political interest groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), who had a hand in changing the law, insist that a higher drinking age protects com munities. They focus on the decline in drunk driving accidents and deaths— something they attribute to a lack of intoxicated under-21s on the road. Recently, MADD has been criticized for stepping away from it’s original purpose and turning toward a â€Å"neo-prohibitionist† outlook that demonizes alcohol, rather than drunk driving. Still, MADD members and other advocates of a 21 year MLDA often point out that death rates due to car accidents for 18 to 20 year olds have decreased since the MLDA act was passed, but this can be countered with the observation that this loss of lives has just been delayed a few years, now showing up in the 21 to 24 age bracket. It would seem that newly-legal drinkers are the ones causing accidents, no matter the age. Perhaps neurologists make the strongest case for a higher MDLA, with their claims that brain development only concludes in one’s early to mid 20s. Of course, the argument can also be made by opponents that the hu man brain grows and changes throughout life— it doesn’t finish on one’s 21st birthday. Other research in the scientific community shows that alcohol abuse is more prevalent in adults who began to drink before the age of 21. When discussing the MLDA in