Why did the United States of America pass a law to increase the drinking age from 18 to 21? The answer is that raising the drinking age to 21 actually reduced the percentage of alcohol-related deaths nationwide. It seems that at 18, young people are not mature enough to handle the responsibilities and consequences that come with the privilege of being able to legally drink alcoholic beverages. The main reason for raising the legal drinking age from 18 to 21 is that drunk driving accidents are the leading cause of death among young people, more than anything else in the country. Vital statistics mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that: “More than 35 percent of these deaths involving people ages 15 to 20 are alcohol-related. In 1996, 2,315 young people died in alcohol-related accidents. Underage drinking and driving is a huge problem in this country, and it would only get worse if the minimum drinking age were lowered to 18, as was the case at the start of the 1980s. Another examination of this problem was a study reported by the...