Should the legal drinking age be lowered to eighteen? For decades, the drinking age has been debated between keeping the age at 21 or reducing it to 18, to achieve or limit the rights of young people, decrease the number of accidents resulting from alcohol consumption and monitor the health of college students on and off campus. According to a covert group called Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), the 21-year-old drinking age is responsible for a decline in annual alcohol-related deaths from 26,173 in 1982 (before the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984) to 16,885 in 1982. 2005. Data on this was collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). As progressive and efficient as it may seem, the NHTSA definition of “alcohol-related deaths” includes all alcohol-related deaths, not all deaths resulting from alcohol consumption among those aged 18-21. Suppose there was a car accident that was fatal to both the drunk person and the victim. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would document both people under the statistic. Now, let's pretend that the drunk person wasn't the only person in the car: in this case, there would be eight drunk people from the drunk person's fraternity. Let's also pretend that there was more than one victim: in this case it would be a family of five. Again regarding the accident described above, if all the people died in both cars, the data numbers would increase significantly. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Speaking of statistics and how some programs ascertain their numbers to support the drinking age of 21, several studies have been conducted by individual universities and colleges across the United States over the years. Citing an academic article titled University Students' Drinking Patterns and Problems: Examining the Effects of Raising the Purchase Age, “Two studies reported steady increases since the early to mid-1970s in drinking at the universities studied, while two other studies, one for years 1970s and another from the early to mid-1980s, found a decrease in alcohol consumption among student respondents. In contrast, three other studies reported no noticeable change over time in the percentage of drinkers on the college campuses they studied.” Evidently, there is conflicting data between the studies conducted, making it virtually impossible to reach a conclusion about raising the drinking age. The reason for this is due to different definitions of drinking, sampling procedures and statistical analyses. In the same article, the definition of heavy drinking is: “…those who consume six or more drinks at one time more than once a week.” For this reason, the number of drinkers between eighteen and twenty-one years of age seems like a big problem, when in reality, historically, it is not. Before the national minimum drinking age law was passed in 1984, the average percentage of students drinking was 90 percent in 1976. After the federal order was authorized and enforced, the percentage dropped to 88.2 %. These data conclude that regardless of whether a federal alcohol law goes into effect, young adults will continue to drink. A common argument used in relation to lowering the drinking age is the age to join the army, which is also eighteen. In an article titled “Politics and Safety Cloud College-Led Bid to Spur Debate,” a political associate named Matthew Gever said the topic is.