"Let's All Get Drunk"

With growing up comes the responsibility of taking care of yourself in millions of situations and through thousands of different decisions. No longer are parents constantly watching your back and keeping an eye on your every move; now you are doing what you want to do. Slowly you gain more and more freedom by getting to stay out until10, then 11, and finally 12am on Friday nights. It is all based on the measure of trust that your parents have in you and the decisions that you are going to have to make. The more truthful that you are towards your parents, the more likely that they are going to trust you out late with friends.

However, there are some problems that arise as kids begin to near adulthood, including sex, alcohol, and drugs. The most prominent problem is alcohol which affects around 20% of teenagers in the United States who are between the ages of 12 and 17. This causes even more extensive problems with growing up into a healthy and successful adult. Drinking alcohol has become a social activity and an event where teenagers can meet new friends. Even though these events can be both entertaining and fun, there are still many serious consequences that teenagers often take for granted while inducing. These can vary anywhere from having sex, to driving drunk, to getting poisoned, to getting in trouble by the law, or to possibly even getting so drunk that you end up dying.

Within the past few decades the number of teenagers who drink frequently, and illegally, has increased greatly. Thousands of teenagers wake up regretting something that happened the night before, while they were too wasted to control themselves. An even scarier piece of data is the fact that the average age of boys who have their first drink is 11, while for girls it is around 13 years old. High school commonly consists of drinking both before and after popular sports games, and by having multiple parties each weekend night. This results in many teenagers getting in trouble by the school and developing bad habits that will probably stay with them for the rest of their lives.

Many parents fail to recognize the waning signs that their children are drinking alcohol at such young ages. However, even by realizing the mistakes that their children are making, there is still a high probability that these kids will continue to drink. Eventually almost 100% of teenagers will be involved with drinking alcohol because of the influences that we are constantly receiving from various advertisements. I think that it is now too late to stop this illegal activity and that it would almost be smarter to just lower the drinking age so that kids are not so eager to drink.