The drinking age lowered

I will briefly outline his argument below: Because: Alcohol consumption can be harmful to others; Domestic violence and incest are more likely to occur in homes with alcoholics; and People under the age of 20 cannot make rational, responsible life choices The age restriction on alcohol should remain at 21. Before going into my own arguement I will respond to some of my opponent's personal accusations. 1. Yes, I understand that incest is a sexual relationship with members of the same family. No, I do not think there is a problem with such a relationship so long as members of the relationship are consenting adults. My point on incest is that your source uses it as a boogeyman. They list off a few consequences of alcohol in an attempt to make it seem scarier than it is in reality. You must also remember, correlation does not equal causation. Your source attempts to insinuate that it is alcohol that causes incestual relationships. It claims that incest is more likely in alcoholic homes, when it seems much more likely that the reverse is true - that alcohol is more likely to be found in homes with incestual relationships. 2. The New York study on college drinking was a University wide study. That means they followed the drinking habits of the entire university and found that drinking habits had changed very little, if at all. After this study, other universities conducted similar university-wide studies and turned up similar results. It would be a waste of time and prove absolutely nothing to research the enrollment numbers of New York State University for the years in question so I will not. If Con or the reader wishes to verify my sources, be my guest. I would gladly pit my sources against the ones he has listed. Mine cited their sources and base their claims on objective studies. His do not cite where they obtained their information, so we are left to guess their validity. 3. Drinking is also a skill of sorts. Allow me to direct all question on this point to Brian Eggleston of Debate. org. The fact of the matter is that experience in either drinking or driving will make someone better at it. With driving, a person will become more safe with age. With drinking, a person can become more responsible, especially if they are taught how to be responsible at a younger age. ----------------- I will now make my closing arguments in favor of lowering or removing the drinking age. Con believes the drinking age should remain the highest in the world because it can be harmful to others. However, a large number of things that can be harmful to others are not similarly regulated. For instance, cars give off carbon emissions but there is no restriction on how long a person can drive. Driving at all can cause fatal accidents, yet we still allow people to drive. Fast food restaurants serve fattening, unhealthy foods that harm its customers, yet we allow them to stay open. These, and a large number of other harmful aspects of society do no warrant government regulation and my opponent has not offered a compelling reason why a drinking age does. Con finds a useful scapegoat in alcohol when looking at issues such as incest and domestic violence. I have already addressed incest above when it is between consenting adults. His source does not address what proportion of these relationships are consented to. Certainly alcohol can play a role in some cases of non-consentual incest. However, it is likely that psychological problems play a much larger role and may even be the reason that alcohol is involved as well. Con also believes alcohol to be the major factor in domestic violence. However, he does not mention the fact that in 45% of domestic violence cases there is no alcohol involved. Additionally, this is not related to drinking age restriction. Con concedes that once a person is above the age of 21 (the age when he believes a person can be reponsible for his own actions) they can drink as they please. Therefore, the drinking age is not linked to domestic violence issues and this whole point is irrelevent. Con claims that people under the age of 20 cannot make informed, rational, responsible choices. Nothing can be farther from the truth. It would seem that my opponent, aged 17, holds himself and his cohorts to very low standards. As he would have you believe, those poor teenagers are helpless when pitted against the evils of alcohol. They cannot help themselves once they have had a single drink and become irresponsible dangers to society. Clearly this is not the case in reality. Kids can make rational, responsible choices on issues such as their future, why can they not do the same with alcohol? Early education on alcohol and responsible drinking would significantly reduce the number of later alcohol-related problems. Finally, Con claims that "there are less drunkards on the road because of the law. " The law he is referring to is the age restriction. However, he earlier conceded that it was likely police crackdown on drunk driving that is responsible for the decrease in alcohol related fatalities. This seems to be a more plausible explanation. Unfortunately for Con, he did not include any evidence to support his claim. ------------------------ CONCLUSION My opponent has failed to link drinking age restrictions to any of his larger points. He has not shown how it has helped decrease domestic violence or incest. He has not shown how it has decreased drunken driving accidents. More importantly, he has failed to offer any compelling reason why the government should become involved in its citizens' drinking habits. His quickly dropped his first argument for this (harm to self). I have shown his second argument (harm to others) to be irrelevent to age restriction.