The Prevalence of Drinking and Driving Among Teenagers
This letter civically addresses the future president and asks him to lower the legal drinking age to 18 on the basis that teens would not feel the need to drink in secret anymore, drinking would become less of a rebellious act associated with illegal activity, and the number of teens drinking and driving would go down drastically due to teens being in a more controlled and nourishing environment.
Dr. Future President,
The prevalence of drinking and driving among teens is an issue that should be taken with the utmost seriousness. According to the CDC, around 2.4 million teens drink and drive every month (“Teen Drinking”). This alarming statistic is partly due to the fact that these teens, highschool and college kids alike, are drinking in secret, often without their parents approval. This leads to irresponsible and unsupervised behavior, which often ends with teens driving home because they do not feel comfortable asking a sober adult for a ride. A solution to this problem is lowering the legal drinking age to 18. By lowering the drinking age from 21 teens would not feel the need to drink in secret, drinking would become less of a rebellious act associated with illegal activity, and the number of teens drinking and driving would go down drastically due to teens being in a more controlled and nourishing environment. Mary Kate Cary, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush and a contributing journalist for U.S.News, states that the U.S is one of only seven countries in the world with a drinking age of 21+ (Time to Lower”). In other countries, the drinking age is equivalent to the age that one is able to join the army, thus allowing someone that can die for his or her country the right to legally drink. Drinking and driving directly affected me when my aunt Rachel, a mother of two beautiful children, was struck and killed by a drunk driver. She was 33. We mourned for her after her death and could barely come to terms with the fact that she her death seemed so avoidable, so unnecessary. Now, although the driver that hit her was not a teenager, it can be reasonably assumed that if at a younger age this man was given a nourishing environment in which he learned how to drink responsibly, my aunt Rachel might still be alive. Please consider lowering the drinking age to 18, allowing teenagers to not feel the need to drink and drive and thus giving them a healthy environment in which they can learn how to drink responsibly with the help of their parents. My aunt was an amazing women who died much too young, do not let her death be in vain, use it to avoid similar deaths in the future by evoking change.
Sincerely,
Spencer Hurst
Works Cited
"Teen Drinking and Driving." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, 2012. Web. 30 Sept. 2016.
"Time to Lower the Drinking Age." US News. U.S.News & World Report, n.d. Web. 30 Sept.
2016.