Annotated Bibliography

Baldauf, Sarah. "SETTING THE BAR AT 18." U.S. News & World Report 142.14 23 Apr. 2007: 28-28.

John McCardell, the former president of Middlebucy College, tries to explain why and how the legal drinking age should be changed from 21 back to 18. McCardell brings the issue to our attention of how the high age limit is meant to keep people safe, but the age limit is just making it worse and causing people to binge drinking. McCardell doesn’t want to lower the drinking age to 18 to encourage underage drinking, he just wants a way to educate so the kids can earn a right. This article is important to my project because McCardell actually provides a way of dealing with this problem in a responsible fashion.


Balko, Radley. "Back to 18?." Reason online. 12 Apr. 2007. Reason magazine. 21 Oct 2007 http://www.reason.com/news/show/119618.html.

Balko’s article offers data collected about the human brain. The affect that alcohol has on a child’s brain is one thing that the supporters for the 21 drinking age uses. Balko tells us that in Europe where the legal drinking age is much lower their kids do much better on standardized testing. This article will be useful because it show all of the misinterpretations that supporters of the existing law uses.

"Big Government, Small Results." Atlantic Monthly 300.3 (Oct. 2007): 30-30.

This article discusses the findings that the research in 1984 showed about how the higher age limit helped save copious amounts of lives. The new findings show that it slowly started increasing and the research was compiled inaccurately. This article is going to be useful to me because it goes against one the main reasons for keeping the legal age where it is.

Carroll, Joseph. "Most Americans Oppose Lowering Legal Drinking Age to 18 Nationwide: Six in 10 Americans support stricter penalties for underage drinking." Gallup Poll Briefing 27 July 2007: 4-7.

Carroll informs us of the fact that most of America is against lowering the legal drinking age to 18. Carroll gives all the reasons why these 6 out of every 10 people are opposed to the idea of lowering the legal drinking age. This gives me more ideas to include in the section of my essay about why it might be a good thing to keep the high drinking age.



"Communities can impact alcohol use." Nation's Health 37.5 (June 2007): 10-10.

This article suggests that raising the tax on alcohol could do more for preventing deaths in automobiles than the high drinking age. This article states the facts about the higher tax before the high drinking age, which is one fact that really supports lowering the drinking age.

Engs, Ruth C.. "Why the drinking age should be lowered: An opinion based upon research." Indiana University. 20 March 1998. English department at Indiana University. 21 Oct 2007 http://www.indiana.edu/~engs/articles/cqoped.html.

Engs provides one unique way of changing the legal age at which someone can consume alcohol. She suggests that the drinking age should be lowered to 18 only in controlled environments such as “restaurants, taverns, pubs and official school and university functions.” She tells us how since the drinking age was raised; in the first year more people reported vomiting due to binge drinking. This article has statistics that I can use to further one point I’m trying to make in my essay.

Frantz, Jeff. "Europeans Learn Responsible Drinking." Alcohol Problems and Solutions. 2 Feb. 2004. State University of New York. 22 Oct 2007 http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/YouthIssues/1077563832.html.

Frantz remind us about what happens in America when young adults turn 21, we go to the bar and get so drunk we get sick. This is not the case that happens in Europe, they are already desensitized to alcohol so when they turn 18 or 16, depending on the country, they don’t go “crazy” and end up sick or in the hospital. This article is important because it tries to prove that America needs to “demystify” alcohol.

Guenther, Scott, et al. "One benefit to a lower drinking age: fewer alcohol emergencies." Christian Science Monitor 98.41 25 (Jan. 2006): 8-8.

This article is a response to another article that tried to say that there is no benefit to lowering the drinking age. This article gives very interesting statistics about America’s Ivy League schools compared to a very large European school, which is very useful for me. Guenther is trying to prove a point about how many more students go to the hospital in America for alcohol than Europeans.


Johnson, Alex. "Debate on lower drinking age bubbling up." msnbc. 14 Aug. 2007. 21 Oct 2007 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20249460/.

Johnson enlightens us on how a new rising in trying to change the legal age is starting to take hold of small communities all over America. Johnson adds in his article about that the legal drinking age isn’t a federal law but merely states being pressured by the federal system. This article would help my project out because it give me different statistics for each state. These statistics are very interesting because the statistics tell us there are loop holes in these state laws, this will be good to include in my essay.

MADD. 2007. Mothers Against Drunk Driving. 21 Oct. 2007 http://www.madd.org/

This website offers the opposite point of view on the lowering of the legal drinking age. The MADD organization is the group the pressured congress into enacting the drinking age to be 21. On their website it give statistics, medical background, and history of this battle. This will be useful to my project because of how bias they are toward keeping this restriction. This will help me get a whole point of view about this issue. This website will also give me the opposition’s history to this topic.

Seaman, Barrett. "How Bingeing Became the New College Sport." Time 166.9 (29 Aug. 2005): 80-80.

Seaman offers us an explanation about how binge drinking has taken over many American college campuses. Seaman tells us about how it used to be back in his college days, they would drink a lot but not enough to hospitalize themselves, which is what is happening all over the country. This article gives me the explanation about when and who influenced the change in the legal drinking age, which is crucial to the understanding of this issue.