How many of you were actually 21 when you had your first taste of alcohol?
Many college presidents are urging legislators to lower the legal drinking age, because they say that the current legal drinking age of 21 encourages binge drinking on college campuses. They have formed an organization called the Amethyst Initiative which is trying to encourage discussion of reconsidering the U.S. drinking age laws.
Critics, such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, claim that lowering the drinking age would result in an increase of fatal car crashes based on statistics from past studies. They also accuse the college presidents of misrepresenting research and trying to find an easy way out of an inconvenient issue.
While it is true that alcohol-related deaths have declined since the National Minimum Drinking Age Act was passed in 1984, it appears that MADD has also been bending the research to support their own view on this issue.
It is true that since 1984, when the drinking age law passed, alcohol-related fatalities have declined. However, that’s not the whole story. The decline began in 1982, two years before the law changed. The rate went up in the three years following passage of the law. The decline since 1984 has been in every age group, not just the 18-20 population. And alcohol-related traffic fatalities reached a 10-year high in 2006. Assertions of cause and effect cannot be selectively made.
Based on my experiences, I think the drinking age should be lowered to 18, and here’s why.
People drink regardless of the legal drinking age.
Who are we kidding here? When it comes to deciding to drink, there are way more factors at play than the legal drinking age. Religious reasons, peer pressure, “Asian flush“, and simple curiosity are just a few of the things that come to mind, not some arbitrary age where we are suddenly responsible enough to handle alcohol.
The legal drinking age is lower in other countries.
[B]etween 1982 and 1992, in spite of raising the drinking age to 21, the US experienced a lower rate of decline in alcohol-related traffic fatalities than in any other country where such data were reported (including Germany, Australia, England, The Netherlands, and Canada). In fact, Canada, which experienced a 28% rate of decline in traffic fatalities between 1982 and 1992 and maintained a drinking age of 18 or 19, experienced a similar decline to in youth drinking and driving rates.
You can vote, marry, and go to war at 18.
But you can’t drink. It just doesn’t make any sense to say that someone is ready to handle all of those other things, but not alcohol. With the divorce rates nowadays, maybe we should consider swapping the minimum ages for the two.
So what do you do you think? Should the U.S. lower the legal drinking age?
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree. I also think they should severely enforce DUIs.
I believe the drinking age should be lowered and agree with SP that DUI and other alcohol related offenses should be enforced much more severely. All other pviledges in this world are at age 18 so they should balance it all out as well. Alcohol does more damage to people’s lives than marijuana (my opinion) and ganja is illegal. Kids are drinking and doing drugs at younger ages every year, might as well bring it down and incrase the education to help prevent abuse from happening. Great post!
When looking at the statistics provided by the pro and con parties, it would be interesting to know how other factors: enforcement of seat belt laws, increased policing of DUI’s, car safety features, education programs and the like could have influenced those statistics.
I think what is different about us and other countries with lower drinking ages is the way in which we think of alcohol.
If it is something you regularily had with your parents at the dinner table, and something you were freely able to indulge in while under your parent’s care (typically 16 or 18 years old- when you’re not yet in college until 19), then there is less peer pressure to behave irrationally and more family support when trying out this new freedom. Yes, I met heavy drinkers in my trips aboard, but none of them tried to drive themselves home. Everyone knew how to drink responsibily.
I live in New Zealand where the drinking age is 18… in saying that, I don’t know anyone who was 18 before they had their first drink either. I was brought up to enjoy a small glass of wine with my meal (probably from about the age of eleven, how continental right?) and for the most part I drink responsibly.
It blows my mind how in the states you can be old enough to be in college and live independently, yet you aren’t considered old enough to be responsible for your actions. If you got married at twenty (young, but not unheard of) does this mean that you can’t have a celebratory toast at your own wedding?
I think the important thing is to educate teenagers so that they know the responsible choices that they are going to take. Granted, they won’t always take that choice but from personal experience (and knowing a lot of others) that doesn’t change once you hit a magical age either
I think if you’re old enough to kill you’re old enough to drink.
SP: I agree and think that lowering the age would give cops more time to enforce DUIs rather than busting college hangouts to check IDs.
Doctor S: It’s definitely ironic that alcohol is legal while marijuana is not when alcohol is clearly the more dangerous of the two.
So Cal Savvy: I’d also be interested to see how other factors contributed to the statistics, but it’s hard to find any information from a neutral party.
Scribbles: When it comes to educating teenagers about any “adult” topics (alcohol, sex, etc.) over here, I think you’d be shocked.
I agree with the other commenters that stronger enforcement would be the way to go. Even better, if you start charging larger fines of hundreds or thousands of dollars for offences like public drunkenness, cities and states can raise more money to support public services during the current downturn in the economy.