This is harder than I thought.

Here's a speech I just turned in for my speechwriting class. We had to write a speech for and against lowering the drinking age to 18. Here's my case for leaving it the way it is. This side of the debate does not necessarily represent my personal views on the issue, which made this speech a bit of a challenge. Interestingly enough, I ended up writing a more effective speech for this side of the issue than the side I agreed with.

I would love to hear any feedback you have.

We Can’t Afford to Change the Drinking Age

Our streets, our college campuses, and our ditches are littered with the bodies of 5,000 children and teenagers. Bodies that carry the putrid stench of beer and booze.

5,000 children and teenagers—165 kindergarten classrooms, 330 little league soccer teams, 125 troops of girl scouts—are killed each year at the hands of underage drinking.

Some say lowering the drinking age to 18 could solve this devastating problem. They even suggest that lowering the drinking age could save lives.

The statistics on alcohol deaths are staggering, but they could be even worse. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that the drinking age of 21 saves one thousand lives each year. Those are one thousand lives worth saving. One thousand lives is too high a price to pay to experiment with a new drinking age.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services calls underage drinking a “leading public health problem in this country”. It is a problem that we must address in all its complexity. But we have a high drinking age in this country for a reason: because it actually saves lives.

To those who argue that lowering the drinking age will somehow improve the culture around underage drinking: I ask you to look across the world to New Zealand.

They too faced the deadly nightmare of underage drinking. But in 2000, New Zealand listened to the advice of the proponents of a lower drinking age. They decreased their drinking age from 21 to 18. And the results were disturbingly clear. After they changed their drinking age, alcohol-related crashes increased by 12%. In this country, that would mean 600 more kids dead on the road every year.

Changing the drinking age sounds like an easy fix to a complex problem. But this change would only add to alcohol’s rising death toll. Instead, we must combat underage drinking with efforts in the home, in our schools, and on our streets. Parents should be more vigilant about where their kids are going. Universities must be more open with their students about the costs of drinking. And every American should grow up knowing that drinking and driving will not be tolerated in this country.

But as long as our drinking age saves the life of even one child or teenager, we must keep it that way.