Legal Drinking Age Hypertext Proposal

As an eighteen-year-old teenager, I know from experience the vast majority of kids that drink underage. Nearly every peer in my high school graduating class had consumed an alcoholic beverage underage. I had a couple of friends who were at the time eighteen, and the lost scholarships to schools because of MIP’s. I would guess that almost everyone in this class has had an experience with underage drinking, whether they themselves have had a beer, or know someone else who has. With this said I could safely say that all of us can relate to the legal drinking age of 21. There are many different positions on the idea of changing the legal age, and we all have our own opinions. Hopefully I will be able to cover the main positions of four major groups, and I will be able to inform people to the best of my abilities about the situation.

The first group I would cover would be the underage youth in the United States that want to lower the drinking age from 21. This can be split up into two groups as well. Those who want to lower it to 18, and those who want to lower it to 19. I haven’t heard anything about people wanting to change the legal age to 20, so I will probably leave that out of my analytical hypertext. The second group I plan on covering is the arguments of people who are currently over the age of 21 that would like to lower the legal age to either 18 or 19. They have had experience with being over the age of 21 and probably have a vast insight into potential problems and most importantly the benefits of lowering the legal age. The third group that I could possibly cover would be the U.S. and state governments, and their respective positions in the argument. Currently all 50 U.S. states have a minimum drinking age of 21, which was instituted by the National Minimum Drinking Age Act that passed through congress in 1984. To actually change the legal drinking age would involve proposing new amendments to state constitutions, and many senators and representatives have strong feelings about lowering the drinking age. The final group I would cover would be those who oppose lowering the drinking age. There are many strong arguments from this group, and I would believe that most of those who oppose lowering the drinking age are over 21 and have had their own personal experiences with underage drinking.