Dear Next President,

My name is Nikolas, and I’m go to a school in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. I would like you to know that lowering the drinking age will cause major medical problems. Underage drinking can hamper the development of the brain, which causes one to be more prone to addiction, memory loss, depression, violence, and suicide. This is why we need to create more strict laws on underage drinking, starting with a more harsh punishment.

In 29 states you are allowed to drink on private, non alcohol-selling grounds, with parental consent, and even though drinking under the age of 21 is illegal, people aged from 12 to 20 years old drink 11% of the alcohol in the United States. Underage drinking has a range of physical consequences from hangovers, to even death from alcohol poisoning, car crashes, homicide, and suicide. This is why we need to make stricter laws on underage drinking, such as a harsher punishment for underage drinking. Most offenders only get criminal fines, community service, or even just a suspension of their license. Rarely does someone get jail time. Stricter laws are needed because most do not know what can happen when they are under the influence of alcohol.

Lowering the drinking age could also lead to more crime. If the drinking age is lower, that will cause more people to enter bars, which are not safe environments. It’s been proven that locations with more bars have more crimes. Imagine your own child if they were under the age of 21 walking into a bar, starting a fight, getting themselves seriously injured or even killed, or getting someone else seriously injured or killed. No one wants to live in areas where there is a high crime rate, which is why we cannot lower the drinking age.

Sincerely,

Nikolas