2008 Fall Critical Thinking Research Topic: Drinking Age

Please add findings below following the template on the Fall 2008 Critical Thinking Research Topics page.

Group members should also work to keep the page well organized. -Alfino

Arguments for Lowering the Drinking Age Are Misguided

Research Link

Summary/Reconstruction This article explains that the drinking age should be enforced. They go one to explain that lowering the drinking age won’t give teens the chance to learn to drink in moderation it will only allow lower age teens to access alcohol and distribute it to lower age teens. Also drinking in moderation doesn’t come through lowering the age it comes through maturity, which happens through, “marriage, and a first job”.

Ethan Fleming

Minimum Drinking-Age Laws Are Effective

research link

Summary/Reconstruction this article reviews another article called Journal of Studies on Alcohol, vol. 63, March 2002 which explains that the drinking age of twentyone is the single most effective tool that has curved underage drinking. It reaffirms this belief be stating that the law has saved seventeen thousand lives since 1975. Furthermore when individual states lowered the drinking age to 18, 19, or even 20 the driving fatalities dramatically increased.

Ethan Fleming

Why the drinking age should be lowered

research link

Summary/Reconstruction This site argues that the drinking age should be lowered to prevent. The reason they have include, treating alcohol as a forbidden fruit will only encourage students to drink illegally. They support this point by providing statistics of legal drinkers and underage drinkers. These statistics outline how the drinking amongst underage drinkers is more severe than that of legal drinkers.

Ethan Fleming

Age 21 drinking laws protect youth

under 21 drinking laws

Minimum drinking age laws should be strongly enforced

Need for enforcement of Drinking Laws

‘’’Summary/Reconstruction’’’ This site talks about how alcohol is easily obtained by minors. It goes on to give statistics about how easy it is for youth, particularly males, to obtain alcohol, as there are not many barriers standing in the way of this happening. It goes on to address how the reason for this is that law enforcement officers not on high patrol for this and most teen drinking does not result in arrest.

‘’’Rachel Wagner’’’

Youth Drinking Leads to Alcoholism

Alcoholism from Teen Drinking

‘’’Summary/Reconstruction’’’ The main argument given in this article is that the earlier one starts drinking, the more likely he or she is to become an alcoholic. It talks about how by preventing teen drinking, we can lower the number of alcoholics and lower the number of alcohol related health issues as well.

‘’’Rachel Wagner’’’

Developmental Harm Caused by Alcohol is Overstated

Less Developmental Harm than previously thought

Summary/Reconstruction This article states that there is no true conclusion on whether alcohol inflicts damage upon teen brains or not. The author says there have not been enough studies done; it is also hard to measure cognitive ability in general; it also says many of the articles saying drinking does brain damage are done by the national institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, so they may be screwed as they are paid for by an interest group.

Rachel Wagner

Drinking Impairs Youth Development

Impaired Development

‘’’Summary/Reconstruction’’’ This site argues that if youth drink alcohol than they could sustain brain damage that will last for life. He says this is furthered because teens often binge drink. It also gives a variety of reasons why youth drink.

‘’’Rachel Wagner’’’

Summary/Reconstruction This article talks about how raising the drinking age to 21 has resulted in lowering the number of deaths and injuries from teens driving under the influence, and therefore, has kept teens safer. It talks about how 20,000 lives have been saved as a result of congress passing a law to have a national drinking age of 21, making this uniform between the states.

Rachel Wagner

Debate on lowering the drinking age bubbling up

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20249460/

Summary/Reconstruction I found this link to be helpful becaused it introduces reasons for and against lowering the drinking age. It put ideas into my head and possibly yours. Opening up the issue that having the age at 21 has reduced drunk driving, yet has also opened up the fact taht drinking underage is now done on the underground level. Having drinking behind closed doors leads to unsupervised and potentially dangerous drinking.

Landon Block

A Lower Drinking Age Would Be Unsafe

Finding and Link http://proxy.foley.gonzaga.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tth&AN=34274767&site=ehost-live

Summary/Reconstruction This link is sends you to a good argument for why the age should be 21. It gives stats as well as on epoin tof view on the subject. It is however, a bias link because it only looks at one side of the matter. I find this link to be useful when trying to get a good backround on the subject because it does not dive to deep into the issue.

Landon Block

Younger Males Drink Most, and Sometimes Too Much.

Finding and Link http://proxy.foley.gonzaga.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tth&AN=11348594&site=ehost-live

Summary/Reconstruction If you are looking for stats, come to this site. The stats were done by the "Gallup Poll" whether or not that is credible. One thing you may want to consider is that the stats were done in 2003, however, it is a good basis for comparison.

Landon Block

Minimum Age Limits Worldwide

http://www.icap.org/PolicyIssues/YoungPeoplesDrinking/AgeLawsTable/tabid/219/Default.aspx

this page just has a table that lists all the minimum drinking ages for countries around the world. It has the laws for buying on and off premises as well as some notes for countries that have special circumstances

Austin Larson

Drinking Age

http://inst.sfcc.edu/~hfl/speech/drinkage.htm

This site contains no actual information but has links to many sites that are for the drinking age or against the drinking age as well as more neutral articles.

Austin Larson

Legislative Analysis for the National Minimum Drinking Age Act

http://www.yria.alcade.net/essays/leg-an.htm

This page contains a brief(not very brief, but that was the description) history of different laws that have to do with the drinking age in America. It also has some statistics on what way Republicans and Democrats voted on these laws.

Austin Larson