Choosing Sides: Should States Lower the Legal Drinking Age?

By Hugh C. McBride

The war on terrorism has opened up a new front in the United States - but instead of focusing on bombs and bullets, this battle involves beers and ballots.

With thousands of Americans under the age of 21 deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other hot spots around the world, several states are taking a second look at laws that bar these service members from being able to legally take a drink of alcohol once they return from combat.

CALLS FOR CHANGE

Seven states are currently considering proposals to lower the legal drinking age from 21 to 18:

If enacted, bills currently in the Kentucky, Wisconsin, and South Carolina legislatures would lower the legal age only for military personnel.
Missouri citizens are working on a ballot initiative that would apply to all individuals age 18 and above.
A lawyer in South Dakota is working on a campaign to allow 19- and 20-year-olds to buy "low alcohol" beer (containing no more than 3.2% alcohol by weight).
Minnesota is considering a bill that would allow bars and restaurants to sell alcohol to anyone age 18 or older, but would limit liquor store sales to customers age 21 and up.
In February 2008, the Vermont legislature authorized a task force to explore the potential ramifications of lowering the state's legal drinking age to 18.

In addition to the increased attention given to under-21s in the military, some who support lowering the drinking age say they are motivated by the perceived failures in the existing laws that regulate alcohol consumption.

"Our laws aren't working. They're not preventing underage drinking. What they're doing is putting it outside the public eye," Vermont state Sen. Hinda Miller said in USA Today. "So you have a lot of kids binge drinking. They get sick, they get scared, and they get into trouble, and they can't call because they know it's illegal."

David J. Hanson, an alcohol policy expert with the State University of New York-Potsdam, told MSNBC reporter Alex Johnson that "raising the drinking age to 21 was passed with the very best of intentions, but it's had the very worst of outcomes. Just like during national Prohibition, the law has pushed and forced underage drinking and youthful drinking underground, where we have no control over it."

Of course, not all experts agree that lowering the legal drinking age is the ideal, or even an advisable, approach. In a press release announcing the formation of the Support 21 Coalition, Glynn Birch, the national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said, "Science speaks for itself. When the legal drinking age is 21, lives are saved and injuries are prevented. The 21 Law saves lives on the road and keeps countless youth from starting to drink at early ages. The earlier a youth begins drinking alcohol, the more likely they are to become alcohol dependent, binge drink and to drive drunk later in life."

ABOUT THE LAWS

Though drinking laws in the United States technically fall under the control of the individual states, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 and the Federal Highway Act tied states' passage of 21-and-older laws to their continued receipt of federal funding. States that failed to raise the legal age for the purchase and public possession of alcohol faced a 10-percent decrease in the annual amount of federal money they received for highway construction and maintenance.

Prior to the passage of the federal drinking age act, 30 states allowed 18-year-olds to drink some form of alcohol. Some states set the limit at 18 for beer and wine and 21 for all other alcohol, some authorized 18-year-olds to drink 3.2% beer, and some simply lowered the age for all alcohol to 18.

Within four years of the enacting of the national law, though, all 50 states had established 21 as the minimum legal drinking age. Wyoming became the final state to do this when, on March 12, 2008, then-Gov. Mike Sullivan signed 21-and-above legislation into law to avoid losing $8.2 million in federal highway funds.

The effort to raise the drinking age resulted in the United States having one of the most age- restrictive alcohol policies among all countries where alcohol is not banned for religious reasons. Various sources note that the majority of nations (including the U.S.'s closest neighbors, Mexico and Canada) allow citizens to drink at age 18, with many European countries (such as France, Germany, Italy, and Spain) granting at least some alcohol-consumption rights to 16-year-olds.

EFFECTS AND REPURCUSSIONS

According to a fact sheet posted on the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency's website, the "NHTSA estimates that minimum drinking age laws have saved 18,220 lives of all ages since 1975. ... These laws have had greater impact over the years as the drinking ages in the states have increased, affecting more drivers age 18 to 20."

In September 2001, the NHTSA released a report entitled "Determine Why There Are Fewer Young Alcohol-Impaired Drivers." Statistics cited in that report include the following:

In the United States in 1982, there were 10,270 drivers under the age of 21 involved in fatal crashes. Forty-three percent (4,393) of these drivers were deemed to have been drinking prior to their crashes.
In 1998, the number of drivers age 21 and under who were in fatal crashes was 8,128, with 21 percent (1,714) of these determined to have been drinking.
Comparing 1998 with 1982, the number of youthful drivers involved in fatal crashes declined by 21 percent, and the number who had been drinking declined by 61 percent.

The National Youth Rights Organization, a youth-led nonprofit organization dedicated to the repeal of age-restrictive drinking, curfew, and other laws and the protection of student rights, argues that statistics like the ones cited by the NHTSA are based on faulty logic. A frequently asked questions section on the NYRO website counters that "in an in-depth and unrefuted study [Peter Asch] and [David] Levy prove that raising the drinking age merely transferred lost lives from the 18-20 bracket to the 21-24 age group."

The NYRO also argues that 21-and-over drinking laws are inconsistent with the nation's standard policy of granting adult rights at age 18. "When you are 18 you are judged mature enough to vote, hold public office, serve on juries, serve in the military, fly airplanes, sign contracts and so on," the group writes. "Why is drinking a beer an act of greater responsibility and maturity than flying an airplane or serving your country at war?"

Support for this position isn't limited to individuals who are directly affected by the laws in question. In her article in the March 20, 1998, edition of CQ Researcher, Indiana University professor Ruth C. Engs advocated a lowering of the drinking age as a means of encouraging "mature and sensible drinking behavior" through role modeling in controlled public settings. Engs cited increases in binge drinking and other unhealthy alcohol-related behaviors among the reasons for revisiting minimum drinking age legislation.

"While there has been a decrease in per capita consumption and motor vehicle crashes, unfortunately, during this same time period there has been an increase in other problems related to heavy and irresponsible drinking among college age youth." Eng wrote. "Most of these reported behaviors showed little change until after the 21 year old law in 1987. ... This increase in abusive drinking behavior is due to 'underground drinking' outside of adult supervision in student rooms and apartments where same age individuals congregate."

ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES

In addition to the all-or-nothing "18 or 21" options being debated by various experts and advocates, other groups have taken advantage of the renewed attention to alcohol age limits to propose alternative approaches to controlling the consumption of "adult beverages" by younger Americans.

In 2007, John M. McCardell Jr., the former president of Middlebury College, founded Choose Responsibility, a nonprofit organization that champions a series of changes to existing laws and policies. McCardell's group has put forth a proposal that its website describes as "a multi-faceted approach that combines education, certification, and provisional licensing for 18-20 year-old high school graduates who choose to consume alcohol."

The Choose Responsibility plan is similar to the approach used by many states to educate and license young drivers. The organization is in favor of state-issued "drinking licenses" that would be granted to students who successfully complete at least 40 hours of instruction in the legal, ethical, health, and safety issues related to alcohol consumption, all taught by a certified alcohol educator.

McCardell, who told National Review Online, "I'm not going to claim that legal-age 21 has saved no lives at all, but it's just one factor among many and it's not anywhere near the most important factor," has been a major figure in the drinking-age debate since The New York Times published his opinion piece, "What Your College President Didn't Tell You," in 2004. In that op-ed, McCardell termed the 21-year-old drinking limit "bad social policy and terrible law."

Though he emphasized his opposition to drunk driving and cited his charter membership in the group Presidents Against Drunk Driving in his Times article, McCardell also noted that "No college president will say that drinking has become less of a problem in the years since the age was raised. Would we expect a student who has been denied access to oil paint to graduate with an ability to paint a portrait in oil? 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 DEBATE CONTINUES

With passionate advocates on both sides of the issue, the effort to revise existing drinking-age laws in the United States is moving slowly yet deliberately. No states have yet risked the reduction in federal finances - and the predicted rise in drinking-and-driving-related deaths - by lowering their legal ages for alcohol consumption, but calls to do so continue to come. At the same time, individuals and organizations such as MADD and the Insurance Institute for Highway safety argue for maintaining and enforcing the existing laws.

IIHS President Adrian Lund expressed his and others' opposition to lowering the drinking age in the Support 21 Coalition's inaugural press release. "Study after study has found that when the drinking age was lowered, nighttime fatal crashes for young drivers went up. When the drinking age was raised, crashes went down almost 30 percent. It's irresponsible to assert that untested educational programs could alter these results," Lund wrote. "If we allow states to lower the drinking age again, more teens will drink and drive and more will die."

Sources

Curran, John. "Vermont latest to eye lower drinking age." USA Today. Feb. 29, 2008. (http://www.usatoday.com/news/topstories/2008-02-29-3771114171_x.htm)

Engs, Ruth C. "Why the drinking age should be lowered: An opinion based upon research." CG Researcher. March 20, 1998. (http://www.indiana.edu/~engs/articles/cqoped.html)

Johnson, Alex. "Debate on lower drinking age bubbling up." MSNBC. Aug. 14, 2007 (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20249460/)

Miller, John J. "The Case Against 21." National Review Online. April 19, 2007. (http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YzU4NTcwMTQ4NTBmYzVlNWMzZjgwYTRjYjgyMzll Mjg=)

Mothers Against Drunk Driving. "MADD, AMA, NTSB, IIHS and Others Launch Support 21 Coalition." Sept. 29, 2007. (http://www.madd.org/Media-Center/Media-Center/Press- Releases/PressView.aspx?press=87)

National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. "Determine Why There Are Fewer Young Alcohol-Impaired Drivers." September 2001. (http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/research/FewerYoungDrivers/)

National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. "Fact Sheet: Minimum Drinking Age Laws." Accessed May 30, 2008. (http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/alcohol/Community%20Guides%20HTML/PDFs/Publi c_App7.pdf)

National Youth Rights Organization. "Frequently Asked Questions." Accessed May 30, 2008. (http://www.youthrights.org/dafaq.php)