An Essay on Alcohol Abuse

Authors note: I submitted this as penalty for underage drinking. I learned from my experience and now i share it with all of you.

Massachusetts has a Zero Tolerance Law for underage drinking.  This law states that if a person under 21 years of age has even a drop of alcohol they are in violation of the law. Those that are in violation of this law are subject to be taken into custody by a police officer without a warrant for arrest.  Additionally the Registrar of Motor Vehicles is notified of the violation, and the license or permit of the offender is labeled void.  The offender then must take a course or courses that help educate the minor about alcohol abuse and often time the offender must also take a road rage course in order to regain his license.  Other punishments include, mandatory community service and fines.  Lastly, for repeat offenders these reprimands are escalated.

Socially, there are many negative affects to underage drinking and drinking in general. Firstly, drinking decreases a persons ability to reason and use logic and may cause a person to act in a rash behavior and perform in a manner that they may later regret. A person may choose to drive drunk thinking they are perfectly fine.  They may also choose to have unprotected sex resulting in the transfer of disease or the cause of an unwanted pregnancy.  Students that drink are more likely to drop out of school and be absent on a regular basis.  Some people grow reliant on alcohol, they’ll take a drink or two to relax before a speech or a big date, or a shot before they go to sleep at night.  Things slowly begin to escalate and a drink before you go to bed becomes one or two in the morning to help you wake up.

Alcohol also affects you physically.  The more alcohol a person consumes, the less control over their muscles they have and the more likely a person is to have poor coordination as well as slurred speech.  The loss of motor control leads to falls and accidents and is the cause of many motor vehicle collisions.  Additionally alcohol abuse causes  nausea and vomiting.  This occurrence is actually an attempt of the body to protect itself from alcohol poisoning by removing the alcohol from the system. Nausea is also due to the affect of alcohol that causes disorientation and often times a lack of equilibrium.  Also some heavy drinkers have memory loss and blackouts where periods of time may not be remembered after.  Lastly at .50 alcohol level a person is at a high risk of going comatose.

I learned that between 2 and 3 percent of the current college population will die from some form of alcohol abuse.  This is kind of alarming to me, statistically it’s a low percentage but when compared to the number of students this is a huge number.  Also fifty percent of all arrests are alcohol related.  That’s one out of every two arrests, which indicates that alcohol abuse is a huge issue throughout the country.  The last major fact that was eye opening to me was that nearly 70 percent of all murders were alcohol related.  That’s saying that possibly 70 percent of all murderers did not take into consideration the rationality or the consequences of their crimes.  That 70 percent of all murders could possibly have been prevented.

I would tell my peers that alcohol abuse is a serious issue.  A person under the age of 21 will be arrested for even the slightest amount of alcohol, and the risks of drinking far out weigh any unforeseeable benefits.  Furthermore I would tell my friends that they shouldn’t be drinking and if they ever did, that under no circumstance should they enter a motor vehicle.  70 people are killed by drunk drivers daily… that’s roughly one person every half hour. 

Everything I do today affects how I am going to live the rest of my life.  A poor choice now can be the domino that causes a poor choice down the road, or maybe it can just be a mistake that will stick with me and hang over my head forever.  I do not wish to become something that isn’t what I was raised to be, and I wont allow myself to make poor choices today when I know it jeopardizes my future.