Underage Drink and Drinking and Driving
Today I am going to discuss the problem of drinking and driving as well as under age drinking. According to Center of Disease Control and Prevention 11 percent of all alcohol consumed in the united states is consumed by people ages 12 to 20. More than 90 percent of this alcohol is consumed in the form of binge drinking. Which most of the time leads to under age kids drive under the influence. This is a big problem because many people under age or not are causing wrecks all over the state. According to DUI Statistics 17.419 people died last year because of drunk drivers (“DUI Statistics”). Think of how many mothers, fathers, sister, brother, nieces, nephews and grandkids could have lived if it wasn’t for that one person that decided to drive drunk. For example about a year or so ago a kid from my home town attending the college in Hastings decided to get drunk and drive. He ran a stop sign and hit a car right in the drivers door. The driver of the car was killed instantly. Now think about it do you really want that to happen to you or even someone in your family. He now spends the day of his birthday, the day of the accident and the day of the diseased man’s birthday in prison. Is it really worth it? Me being a teenager I feel the need to fit in and do what everyone else does, but then I think about what happened to that kid and I feel sick and I don’t want to ruin my life as well as the life of others. That is why I don’t go and party.
There is really no possible way to try and get people to stop drinking no matter how hard we try. The only thing we can do is have parents stress to their kids about not drinking. In our high school we have a group called class action. This group meets every other Wednesday and discusses the things we can do to better the community and help with underage drinking as well as drinking and driving. I think that the school needs to make this more advertised so more kids know the consequences of this problem. One more suggestion I would make of trying to lower the number of under age drinking and driving under the influence, is to have kids take a mandatory class in high school over alcohol. I know this won’t help the situation completely but I know it will help in some ways.
Kids are very stubborn and do not want to be told what to do. I know that the kids who really want to drink and drive will do it no matter how many times they are told not to but I think that the more we try to help out with this problem the better it will be.
Works Cited
“DUI Statistics” Online Lawyer Source 2001-2010. 8 Feb. 2010 <http://www.onlinelawyersource.com/criminal_law/dui/statistics.html>
“Quick State Underage Drinking” Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 6 Aug. 2008. 8 Feb. 2010 <http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/quickstats/underage_drinking.htm>
Comments
I think that
I think that underage drinking is becoming more of a problem now due to such a large amount of pressure from t.v. and magazines. A recent example of television influence would be the character "Alan" from the hangover, where he stated,"Ha ha drinking and driving, classic." Many people, underage and not underage, think that drinking and driving is just fine. They never give it a second thought to drink at a party and drive themselves home later that night.
I wish the class action group would advertise their meetings better so more people might attend. This is a very helpful group that can raise awareness about drunk driving. I fear that they are seriously undermined due to the fact they are not well known.
Overall I wish that people would take more responsibility for their actions and think before they act. Many drunk drivers don't want to hurt others but end up destroying families because they are too stubborn to let a sober driver take them home.
DClough-- Great
DClough--
Great insights! Nice statistics! I think you have the beginnings of a research project here....it would be interesting to find out stats of underage drinking here in Ogallala, the problem of underage drinking in Og, and then offer solutions to solve the problem.
I had NO idea about Class Action! Are you a member of this group? I do believe that this should be publicized more! These groups are fantastic if they are actually doing something. What do they do? I was involved with a similar group in high school called Project Extra Mile. This group met a few times a month and worked hard at informing the community of the problem of underage drinking. We also put on various social activities that were held on the weekends (movie nights, dances, etc) so teens could have a safe place to hang out.
Thanks for sharing!
D. Helzer Language Arts Instructor Ogallala Public Schools
I think this has become a
I think this has become a big problem because kids of all ages drink as a teen and drive under the influence or DWI. This causes lots of accidents and many people die over the cause of this and it needs to stop.