Order 349505: Writer′s choice
tutorthammy
20170429_Yifan_ESSAY4698640.docx1
Smarthinking Tutor Response Form
Your tutor has written overview comments about your essay in the form below. Your tutor has also embedded comments [in bold and in brackets] within your essay. Thank you for choosing Smarthinking to help you improve your writing!
Hello, 1! I’m Sherry M., and I look forward to working with you on this Essay Center Review to improve your writing today. Let's get started!
*Writing Strength: You effectively use signal phrases that introduce your ideas with support from outside sources. For example, you wrote:
“Watson & Angela carried out a study on the effect of minimum drinking age on birth outcomes and found out that there is a connection between the legal drinking age and small weights at birth and prematurity of babies at birth (23).”
This lets the reader know that you are using an outside source, and shows that your ideas are well-researched. Well done!
*1 has requested that you respond to the Main Idea/Thesis:
Your thesis statement doesn’t give me a clear idea of what your paper addresses. In a compare and contrast essay, the thesis make it clear if you will compare, contrast, or both in your essay. Your thesis is:
“This history and the different discussions have always led to the query of if 21 is the ideal age or should the age be increased or decreased.”
Will you compare, contrast, or both to answer your question? Is there discussion about raising it from 21 to something higher?
Before revising your thesis statement, ask your instructor if you should be choosing a side, if you should tell why this topic is relevant in the thesis statement, and if you should list the body paragraphs in the thesis statement. These are all variations of the thesis statement for a compare/contrast essay. Your instructor will be the one who determines if these things are important.
Introduction/Conclusion Your conclusion tells what you did, instead of what you said. This can be condescending to your reader, and it doesn’t act as a reminder of your main points.
The conclusion should wrap up your paper, summarize your thoughts, and give your reader a sense of closure. You could make your conclusion better by considering why you write it. When revising, ask yourself these questions:
· What are the main ideas you talked about in the essay?
· Why is it important to remind your reader of your main points?
· How can I use these ideas to give the reader a sense of closure?
*1 has requested that you respond to the Use of Resources:
More of your references are older than 5 years than less than 5 years old. This can make the reader wonder if your idea is still relevant. Out of 9 reference entries, 5 of them are older than 2012.
One of the determiners of good references is currency. If your sources are not current, it might indicate that the topic is no longer important. Each school has its own guidelines for the currency of research, so it’s best to check with your instructor about this. You may even find this information in your school’s Student Handbook.
A rule of thumb is that less than 10% of your resources are older than 5 years. If you can’t find sources that are less than 5 years old, ask yourself if this topic is worth your research time.
Summary of Next Steps:
· Revise your thesis statement to tell your reader if you will compare, contrast, or both.
· Revise your conclusion to give a sense of closure to your reader, and to remind him of your main points.
· Ensure your topic is still relevant, and adjust your references.
You can find more information about writing, grammar, and usage in the Smarthinking Writer's Handbook.
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Please look for comments [in bold and in brackets] in your essay below. Thank you for submitting your work to Smarthinking! We hope to see you again soon.
Should the Drinking Age be Increased or Decreased?
Alcohol consumption in the world has been a source of numerous debates as it causes merry and harm in equal measures. Drinking has been the source of several social problems from crime increase to fund alcohol, to sexually transmitted diseases and traffic accidents. These social evils have raised much criticisms and activism from both government and non-governmental organizations. These discussions have led to the debate on the acceptable legal drinking age in many countries, especially in the United States. Historically the United States has undergone some changes in the legal drinking ages. Initially, the legal drinking age was 21 years old, until Roosevelt Franklin sought a drop of the alcohol consumption age to 18 years. This was during the Second World War, and the nation lowered the age for people who can join the United States Army. Thus the logic that 18-year-olds were mature enough to fight led to the decrease in the drinking age as it was assumed that they were mature enough to drink. Later in 1984, “President Reagan signed an Act raising the drinking age back to 21 years” (Trex). This history and the different discussions have always led to the query of if 21 is the ideal age or should the age be increased or decreased.
The change of the drinking age from 18 years to 21 years was driven mainly by organizations that were opposed to states having the powers to decide the drinking ages such as the ‘Mothers against Drunk Driving’ organization. [This topic sentence implies that you will discuss MADD organization. However, it doesn't seem to be mentioned after the topic sentence. Use your topic sentences to introduce your paragraphs.] The groups sighted the increase in accidents that are alcohol related which were mainly caused by drivers in the age bracket of 18-20 years. These Youth would move from their states where they were prohibited to drink and drive to neighboring states where drinking was legal and then return home later driving while drunk. This led to an emergence of drunk driving fatalities and the phenomena was named “blood borders.” On reversing the legislation in 1984 after the alcohol consumption age was increased to twenty one years in all the states in America, it was found out that more than 900 lives were saved a year from accident fatalities and a record decrease in alcohol deaths 62% among teenage drivers (Trex).
Tietjen, argues that even with the drinking age in place four in five students in college consume alcohol and 90% of these students take alcohol through binge drinking. [To make it clear whether this paragraph is in support of lowering the drinking age, or keeping it the same, use a transition to show how it relates to the previous paragraph. If it reinforces the previous paragraph, you might start with something like, “Furthermore, …” If this paragraph refutes it, you might start with something like, “On the other hand…”] Cognitive development of the mind advances to a great extent during the teenage years. During these teenage years, the mind goes through a phase of specializing and restructuring. This phase allows the refining of connections of the subcortical and frontal regions of the brain and neural connections that are unnecessary are eliminated. Alcohol intake before the full development of the brain and especially binge alcohol consumption may result in cognitive development hindrance and the brain getting permanently damaged (Curie, 27). Prefrontal cortex undergoes rapid development in the period when an individual is a teenager. The prefrontal cortex is the brain's region which deals with decision making and judgment. Therefore, judgment lapses are more likely to occur among the teenagers. Combining this with alcohol consumption will most probably result in questionable decisions being made and the risk of alcoholism is higher during the teen years (Tietjen).
According to Curie, drinking caused the demise of 2,569 people aged between 26-20 (26). These demises were as a result of falls, drowning’s and poisonings. Studies have also shown that more than 33% of the homicides among youth below 21 years were related to alcohol consumption. 8% of suicides by males and 12% of suicides by females below 21 years are also alcohol-related. Also, 90% of rape cases among college students occur when the accoster, both or the victim are under the influence of alcohol. 95% of brutal crimes in universities involve perpetrators who are under alcohol influence. “The social costs of underage drinking are conservatively estimated at $53 billion, including $19 billion from traffic crashes and $29 billion from violent crime” (Curie, 27). This shows that the social burden brought about by teenagers consuming alcohol is immense both concerning finances and emotional trauma. The economic, individual and social consequences of teenage alcohol consumption have led to it becoming the number one United States health problem (Curie, 28).
Bier, in his work, argues that by making alcohol illegal to those below the age of 21 years, we only manage to push alcohol consumption by the underage youth underground (30). This thus means that we force the underage youth to take alcohol in environments that are uncontrolled and thus making binge drinking more frequent in the process. The illegal environment in which the teenagers consume alcohol causes them to create fallacies about alcohol intake behaviors as they are inexperienced and new to the act of alcohol consumption (Bier 30). From the year 1984 when the drinking age was raised to 21 years, binge drinking has risen dramatically among the teenagers (Nugent). This is primarily because youth over 18 years old are allowed to marry, drive and serve in the army but not to drink. Therefore, the young people in contempt of the law choose to drink, and since they can’t do it in an environment where there is supervision, they result to use of alcohol containing high-octane and in large amounts (Nugent). Therefore, by increasing the drinking age, alcohol consumption has bot become less dangerous but rather more hazardous.
Miron disputes the notion that the implementation of the 21-year drinking age limit resulted in the reduction in accident fatalities (16). The decline in accident fatalities is not in question but what is questionable rather is the causative agent of the reduction. The decline in accidents began in 1969, the same year when passenger cars got improvements in crash protection and accident avoidance features. Further reduction in accidents was caused by the safety standards introduced by the federal government. These standards “which allowed for improvements in over three dozen safety measures not previously found in automobiles” (Miron, 16). Vance also argues that if the raising of drinking age to 21 years resulted in a reduction of traffic accidents by those aged between 18-20 years, then the same line of thought can be applied to raising the drinking age to 25 years or any other age or by just prohibiting alcohol use in general.
Watson & Angela carried out a study on the effect of minimum drinking age on birth outcomes and found out that there is a connection between the legal drinking age and small weights at birth and prematurity of babies at birth (23). Lowering the drinking age is linked to sexual initiation, alcohol intake during the pregnancy period and lack of paternity information. Therefore, accidental pregnancies among teenagers result from lower drinking ages which in turn causes adverse health for new-borns. This means that lowering the legal drinking age would be putting the health of the future generations in jeopardy and those in particular from the African American community. Alcohol intake among the youth results in a 4.7% increase in the probability of pregnancy among the youth (Cintina 54).
Some states in India have recently raised the MLDA for hard liquor from 21 years to 25 years. Historically alcohol in India has been highly regulated as it is not used in the region until India was colonized by the Britons (Luca 31). The states that raised the MLDA’s sighted the need to protect the youth as one of the reasons for this legislation. According to Luca’s study on the contribution of alcohol intake towards violence against women, he finds out that there is a connection between alcohol intake and violence towards women by their spouses (31). Luca observes that restricting access to alcoholic drinks lessens the probability of a partner consuming alcohol as well as being violent to his partner. On the other hand, making alcohol easily accessible means that victimization chances rise. "Thus, by adopting a higher legal drinking age in India states has some positive outcomes" (Luca 32).
A country like Canada has its MLDA set at 19 years in most parts, but in some parts, it remains at 18 years. A study was done by the ‘Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse’ on the mortality rate of youths before they attained the MLDA and after they attained it. It was found out that youth mortality rate increased once they attained the MLDA. In fact, the research suggests that raising the MLDA’s in the few regions that have set them at 18 years would result in saving of seven 18-year males in Canada in a year. This shows that Canada has relatively similar conditions and responses to raising their MLDA as the United States. From the example of India and Canada, it can be seen that youth in many parts of the universe react in the same manner to lowering or raising the MLDA.
This paper has shown both the reasons for raising and reasons for dropping the MLDA in America and other countries as well. [Unless it’s important to your essay that this involves multiple countries, consider leaving it out. It almost seems like you’re acknowledging that you got sidetracked.] The arguments are well laid out, and enough logic is given for the different school of thoughts. This essay has been able to illuminate on how increasing the legal drinking age reduced crime levels, unwanted pregnancies, accidents and psychological conditions. It has also shown clearly that some of these assumed positive effects might not entirely be true as there were other contributors to their achievement and thus raising the MLDA ca not entirely be credited for the outcomes. However, to clearly solve the issue of the suitable MLDA, quantitative researches should be carried out on the benefits and disadvantages of the different ages and the contribution of the various cultures to the alcohol consumption problem.
Work Cited
Bier, Alea. Evaluating The Effectiveness Of The Uniform Drinking Age Act. 1st ed., 2011, https://studylib.net/doc/8836708/does-the-drinking-age-of-21-really-benefit.
Cintina, Inna. "Essays on the Link Between Alcohol Consumption and Youth Fertility." (2011).
Curie, Charles. A COMPREHENSIVE PLAN FOR PREVENTING AND REDUCING UNDERAGE DRINKING. U.S. Department Of Health And Human Services, 2006, pp. 20-168, http://www.stopalcoholabuse.gov/media/pdf/underagerpttocongress.pdf.
Luca, Dara Lee, Emily Owens, and Gunjan Sharma. Alcohol Consumption and Violence Against Women. Working Paper, 2014.
Miron, Jeffrey A., and Elina Tetelbaum. "Does the minimum legal drinking age save lives?." Economic Inquiry 47.2 (2009): 317-336.
Nugent, Georgia. "Raising The Drinking Age To 21 Has Been A Disastrous 30-Year Experiment - Nytimes.Com". Nytimes.Com, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/02/10/you-must-be-21-to-drink/raising-the-drinking-age-to-21-has-been-a-disasterous-30-year-experiment.
Tietjen, Denali. "Why 21? A Look At Our Nation’S Drinking Age". Boston.Com, 2014, https://www.boston.com/culture/health/2014/07/17/why-21-a-look-at-our-nations-drinking-age.
Trex, Ethan. "Why Is The Drinking Age 21?". Mentalfloss.Com, 2008, http://mentalfloss.com/article/19437/why-drinking-age-21.
Vance, Laurence. "Why Is The Drinking Age 21? - The Future Of Freedom Foundation". The Future Of Freedom Foundation, 2013, http://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/why-is-the-drinking-age-21/.
Watson, Tara, and Angela Fertig. Minimum Drinking Age Laws and Infant Health Outcomes. No. w14118. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2008.
