NOTE:  The following editorial was submitted by a 7th grade middle school student in Bellevue, WA. She wrote it as a counterpoint to an editorial we ran a couple of weeks ago, “Why it makes sense to lower the drinking age.” You can find it here.

Learn more about Senior Seminar Editorials here. View a list of previous editorials here.

An Editorial by Shareen Khatibloo, Tyee Middle School, Bellvue WA

I came across your article, and it got me thinking about teen drinking. So I did some research on this topic, and I have to say that I disagree with what you are stating in your editorial.  I think that lowering the drinking age to 18 years old will not help this issue very much.One reason why I disagree about lowering the drinking age to 18 years old is that I read on Focus Adolescent services that “the average age that a teenage begins drinking regularly is 15.9 years old.”  And lowering the drinking age to 18 years old won’t stop that.  It will only allow 18, 19, and 20-year-olds to legally drink, too, which could lead to more accidents for driving drunk, since it is only a few years after they learn to drive.  Of course, college students will say that they want to lower the age, because when they had just started college, they wanted to be able to fit in with the older kids who could drink, and drink at the college parties.  Another reason is that the people who know that drinking is bad will think that it is now proven to be safer, since the age limit is lowered, and they might try it.  It is also not certain that the number of deaths due to alcohol or the amount of peer pressure will decrease, because it is proven that adults drink 89% more than teens, so those 18-year-olds might just start drinking more.  Also, the legality is not the only reason that teens are pressured to drink.  If they know that it’s wrong, just don’t want to do it, or if parents, religion, or something else won’t let them, they will still be pressured.

You said that lowering the drinking age is the smartest way to end underage drinking and that it could also take as much as two generations to do this.  I say that instead of telling younger kids that it is okay to drink by lowering the drinking age, we should spend our two generations wiser.  We could start enforcing laws that require adults to hide alcohol where teens won’t find it, or look into other ways for making alcohol inaccessible to teens.  Also, as a society, we can do a better job of educating our younger generation about the hazards of alcohol abuse.