Alaska state representative Bob Lynn (R., Anchorage) is asking the long overdue question: Why do we consider 18-year-olds old enough to join the military, to fight and die for our country, but not to have a drink with their friends before they ship out or while they’re home on leave? Lynn has introduced a bill that would allow anyone 18 years and older with a military ID to drink alcohol in Alaska.
The bill is already facing strong opposition from self-styled public-health advocates. However, the data indicate that the 21-minimum drinking age has not only done zero good, it may actually have done harm. In addition, an individual legally enjoys nearly all other rights of adulthood upon turning 18 — including the rights to vote, get married, and sign contracts. It is time to reduce the drinking age for all Americans.
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In the early 1970s, with the passage of the 26th amendment (which lowered the voting age to 18), 29 states lowered their minimum legal drinking age to 18, 19, or 20 years old. Other states already allowed those as young as 18 to buy alcohol, such as Louisiana, New York, and Colorado. However, after some reports showed an increase in teenage traffic fatalities, some advocacy groups pushed for a higher drinking age. They eventually gained passage of the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which lets Congress withhold 10 percent of a state’s federal highway funds if it sets its minimum legal drinking age below 21. (Alaska would reportedly lose up to $50 million a year if Lynn’s bill passes.)
By 1988, all states had raised their drinking age to 21. In the years since, the idea of lowering the drinking age has periodically returned to the public debate, but groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) have been able to fight back attempts to change the law. (Louisiana briefly lowered its age limit in back to 18 in 1996, after the state Supreme Court ruled that the 21 limit was a form of age discrimination, but the court reversed that decision a few months later.)
It’s true that America has a problem with drinking: The rates of alcoholism and teenage problem drinking are far greater here than in Europe. Yet in most European countries, the drinking age is far lower than 21. Some, such as Italy, have no drinking age at all. The likely reason for the disparity is the way in which American teens are introduced to alcohol versus their European counterparts. While French or Italian children learn to think of alcohol as part of a meal, American teens learn to drink in the unmonitored environment of a basement or the backwoods with their friends. A 2009 studyby the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute of Health, and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concluded that 72 percent of graduating high-school seniors had already consumed alcohol.
The problem is even worse on college campuses, where there is an unspoken understanding between students, administrators, local law enforcement, and parents that renders drinking-age restrictions effectively moot as students drink alcohol at frat or house parties and in their dorm rooms. The result is dangerous, secret binge drinking. This unspoken agreement and the problems it creates led a group of college chancellors and presidents from around the nation to form the Amethyst Initiative, which proposes a reconsideration of the current drinking age.
Middlebury College president emeritus John M. McCardell, who is also a charter member of Presidents Against Drunk Driving, came out in favor of lowering the drinking age to 18 years old in a 2004 New York Times opinion article. “Our latter-day prohibitionists have driven drinking behind closed doors and underground,” he wrote. “Colleges should be given the chance to educate students, who in all other respects are adults, in the appropriate use of alcohol, within campus boundaries and out in the open.”
The most powerful argument, at least emotionally, for leaving the drinking age at 21 is that the higher age limit has prevented alcohol-related traffic fatalities. Such fatalities indeed decreased about 33 percent from 1988 to 1998 — but the trend is not restricted to the United States. In Germany, for example, where the drinking age is 16, alcohol-related fatalities decreased by 57 percent between 1975 and 1990. The most likely cause for the decrease in traffic fatalities is a combination of law enforcement, education, and advances in automobile-safety technologies such as airbags and roll cages.
Excellent article! Our country's experiment with the 21-year-old drinking age has been a disaster. College students are going to gain access to alcohol. By prohibiting them from drinking while still under the supervision of their parents, or in the socialized setting of a restaurant, the state prevents them from being instilled with proper drinking habits. So instead they binge drink at parties.
I compare this to my time in Germany: the drinking age is officially 16 (I recall fondly the sign in my local supermarket, which translated roughly to "It is strictly forbidden for anyone under the age of 16 to buy beer or wine"). In fact, children drink small amounts of beer and wine earlier than that -- under the supervision of their parents at meals. Therefore they learn that alcohol is something that is a normal part of life, and to be consumed in a responsible way. This is no different from the way that parents encourage responsible eating in their children -- you might let your children have chocolate from time to time, but you will make sure that they learn that chocolate is something to be consumed in moderation.
Not having time for research, but having plenty of memories and experience, I must disagree. When the age was lowered to 18 in Connecticut I was 18. I had my first legal drink on my birthday and drove home buzzed. There was a steady carnage of young folks doing likewise, with one death in my own high school class (of 92). Going out to college in Ohio,where the age was 21, I couldn't get a drink. So I didn't.
The argument against college enforcement is ludicrous, both my alma mater (CWRU 1978) and my son's (BU 2007) policed this issue. My lad was fined $100 at BU for having a six pack of Guinness in his room on St Paddy's day--13 days before he became legal.
To lower the drinking age is to invite death and disaster.
Doctor Robert, didn't everyone in your high school class load up one 18 year old friend with cash on Friday and send him off in his Olds 442 to Brewster or Greenwich after school to bring back 52 discrete booze orders for the weekend parties?
I support your argument on it’s legal grounds. If you are considered an adult at 18, you should be able to make the choices of an adult.
Why does America choose to abridge citizen’s rights without proof that the individual has committed a crime? For example, why not fit the entire population of America with a GPS device to help prevent breaking and entering? Because most of us have not committed that crime, and should be treated as free citizens until the time that we are convicted of a crime.
Taking into consideration that legally you are considered an adult at the age of 18. However, looking at today's society and the mindset of many of young adults. Most of them are immature and are not responsible for their actions. Honestly, they shouldn't even be considered to drive until they are 18. They hide behind their parents and barely can get themselves out of a wet paper bag. And they show no self-control.
Am I the only one here who remembers when we HAD this conversation? It was during the Vietnam War. And all the states - except, I believe, Indiana, lowered their drinking ages to 18. (When I attended Notre Dame, which is just a few miles from the Michigan border, a bus took students up to the bars in Niles, Michigan.)
The silliness of these decisions being made, and unmade, and made again, depending upon who's in office, should be manifest by now. (It reminds me of the old battle designers used to engage women in every year about hemlines.)
In any case, the federal government decided in the 1980s that states wanting federal highway dollars needed to raise their drinking ages. And one by one, they all did.
While I agree that it's stupid that an 18 year old can marry, enter into a contract, carry a gun and kill people, but not drink - I've also spent 28 years on college campuses, and way too much mindless drinking goes on. (Often hand in hand with irresponsible, promiscuous conduct. There is a reason 1 in 4 15 - 25 year old have STDs.)
Research has now demonstrated that human brains are not fully developed until the mid-20s. I don't advocate raising the minimum ages for everything to 26. But in most other cases, backups for the lack of wisdom, judgment and experience, are present.
So, for example, an 18-year-old, as a practical matter, is not fighting wars without rigorous training and being part of a structured military unit. Contracts will typically require either large amounts of collateral, or co-signers.
And marriage? Well, admittedly, that's relatively unsupervised, as is the disturbing trend toward creating out-of-wedlock children. But that is a cultural, as opposed to a legal, problem. (If you don't agree, ask yourself how the legal system would police it, and good luck with that.)
Nor will tort laws help. How many 18-year-olds have anything with which to compensate someone they injure while driving drunk, or the survivors of someone they kill? They are, for all intents and purposes, "judgment proof." The alternative is to hold parents responsible in tort, and that is a REAL absurdity, since we would be claiming that 18-year-olds are "mature" enough to make these decisions (in other words, their parents would have no basis for restraining them), but their parents are somehow liable for their behavior.
The answer is probably not lowering the drinking age to 18 - it is changing the American culture to view wine and beer as complements to a good meal - as Europeans and Asians view the beverages - instead of stand-alone sources of intoxication.
Complaints that a higher drinking age just increase the "forbidden" factor have a point. But until the American attitude about alcoholic beverages changes, lowering the drinking age will just give younger - and generally stupider - Americans easier access to it, with all the attendant chaos and carnage that follows.
In Ireland, the legal age for drinking is 18, and we have one of the highest rates of underage drinking in Europe. As far as I can tell, it's one of the worst in the world.
Sorry guys, lowering the age won't make that probably go away. You're likely to just get teenagers drinking at ever younger ages.
From my knothole, anybody with a military ID should be able to have a drink and to vote. Otherwise, drinking should be limited to 21 or older, and voting should be limited to 25 or older + proof of gainful employment.
They do a lot more damage voting than they do drinking. Let them drink all they want, but repeal the 26th Amendment.
I was a 20-year-old combat veteran in 1968. I would have supported McCarthy or Kennedy. Most of the current crop of adolescent voters supported Obama. QED.
Dodd-Frank's FinReg prohibits them from having credit cards until they're 21. They won't be able to drink too much without cash, which most of them won't have as long as tuition hikes outpace Pell grant inflation.
I disagree with the general tenor of the comments. I was in high school when my state succumbed to Congress' blackmail and raised the drinking age from 19 to 21. Being a resourceful lad, I already had several methods to circumvent the 19 limit, and the change made it slightly more inconvenient, but by no means impossible, to acquire alcohol.
What the new age did do was reduce the use of alcohol by the folks a couple of years younger than me. Of course, alcohol use was instantly replaced by use of narcotics, which were far simpler for teens to acquire. In addition, what drinking did occur typically occurred in some out of the way location unlikely to be visited by police...followed by a drive home.
By my way of thinking, we should raise the legal age to thirty five or forty. This would have the effect of solving the problem of alcoholism in people who are too immature and who lack the experience to drink responsibly.
After all, history has shown that replacing personal responsibility with government control is the fast track method for the development of a mature citizenry guided by moderation and self restraint.
An easy solution; lower the drinking age to 18, but raise the driving age to 25. Those kids are a menace on the road drunk or sober, and shouldn't drive until they get some sense.
In this aspect of things I agree. However for every action there is a reaction. Consider the young adults that work. Lowering the driving age would result in less means of transportation for young workers. I think this would return with more money put into public transportation with fewer young people working. Not to good of an idea from an economical aspect.
Some of you are missing the idea here. Lowering the drinking age won't fix the problems with the way we view and use alcohol tomorrow. It won't fix them 2 years from now. But it might help longer down the road for the same reasons that the author mentions Europe doesn't have as many problems with alcohol.
I, on the other hand, think it makes more sense to just completely get rid of the drinking age because lowering it doesn't actually change anything except the age that it becomes legal. In my view if you lower the age to 18, the only thing that changes is the age at which people abuse it because now they can legally have it.
I say abolish the drinking age and in 20 years the problems we have with alcohol may be diminished. They will never be eliminated, though.
Since we're talking about absurd restrictions on voting rights, the cornerstone of a democracy, I hereby propose that anyone with any sort of religious or superstitious belief, including horoscopes, be banned from voting.
Atheists and agnostics are naturally more rational people.
