Here Ms this one is better hopfuly.

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Topic: The legal drinking age should be raised to 21.

To Whom It May Concern:

I am starting to consider unsubscribing to your newspaper. You continuously print unfair and unreliable articles. Again I will provide the other side to your article. In the hopes that you consider printing a article written by a consumer.

My first point in this argument is, people will still drink underage it doesn’t matter if you raise the age. If teens drink underage now why would they stop because the buying age has risen. When teenagers consume alcohol it is usually bought by people who are of the legal age so instead of penalizing those who don’t by for kids who are underage. If the government wants to control under age drink they should make it compulsory to provide photo identification.

My next point is what does the government plan to about the people who already drink legally e.g. 19 & 20 yr olds. I imaginethat they will rebel, most people would. I don’t believe it fair to make people how have been drinking for a year, two years how will the government deal with that.
The answer is the government haven’t come up with a plan for those people who will be affected by this change, they just expect that those who are over the age now but will be under the age if they change the age to “suck it up” and wait again.

The New Zealand government will never change the drinking age because it earns to much in revenue from the taxes. The New Zealand government charges a tax on liquor, this tax is an additional charge to GST. So this begs the question why would they change when alcohol taxes fund huge part of our economy. Especially when at this time the global economy is in a major slum, not only would this age raise hurt our economy it would hurt the economy of the countries who import alcohol into New Zealand.

My final point is New Zealand is incredibly slack when it comes to enforcing our laws on alcohol. It is my idea that instead of changing laws New Zealand police should be enforced them. Recently I was at a public event where there were a huge number of drunken teens obviously underage. This in its self was not alarming what was alarming was the police who were doing nothing. New Zealand should try enforcing the current law instead of creating a new law to delay the inevitable, which is teens will always drink irresponsibly if we didn’t we would learn how drink responsibly.

However there is merit in the idea of raising the age, a possible merit of raising the drinking age is it may encourage New Zealanders to adjust our binge drinking culture. Although I have my doubts about just how effective it would be. I wonder about this because binge drinking has been engrained onto our culture since the days New Zealand was called “the hell hole of the pacific.” New Zealand was given this name because it was the place to come if you wanted to get drunk and have sex. This idea is still an idea in young New Zealanders minds today. So although it may give us a nudge it the right direction it will not stop New Zealanders from binge drinking and drinking under age.

By Kate Mason.