Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered from 21?

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Note first that “effectiveness” in this case has a very narrow definition. The entire argument references alcohol-related traffic fatalities. While this is certainly one way in which a law’s effectiveness might be measured, the absence of any discussion of any other effects renders this argument incomplete and therefore insufficient. We would urge our opponents to identify other ways, beyond the highways, in which the 21 year-old drinking age has had measurable (positive) effects.

But let’s look at the traffic data. 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.

Of 102 studies attempting to determine the relationship between the higher drinking age and the reduction in traffic fatalities, 52, or about half, found a significant relationship. The other half found a statistically insignificant relationship. “Science” has certainly NOT established the “effectiveness” claimed.

Moreover, even if we accept the NHTSA estimate of the total number of lives supposedly “saved” by the higher drinking age (23,733), we must also accept the same agency’s calculation of the number of lives saved by safety belts and air bags during the same period (206,287).

In addition, between 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. “Canadian reductions in youth drinking and driving, followed virtually the same pattern as in the United States . But the Canadian reduction was not due to laws directed at youth: the drinking age did not change during this time, and zero tolerance laws were implemented after the reduction had occurred. This means that the changes must have resulted from some combination of the difficult-to-assess educational and motivational programs and from other factors outside of traffic safety. This conclusion suggests that a substantial portion of the reduction in the United States also resulted from these same causes.”

This downward trend in drunken driving across the industrialized world suggests that something other than a change in the drinking age was at work. Thanks to successful public education efforts, attitudes toward drinking and driving changed over time. The “designated driver,” a term unknown in 1984, indicates such an attitudinal shift.

Finally, a recent and much-heralded study by PIRE concludes that the higher drinking age accounted for an 11.2% decline in alcohol-related fatalities, corroborating many earlier studies on the topic. This finding may be indisputable (and we believe it is not, given research currently being undertaken), but the rest of the report, less-noticed in the press, also demands attention. According to PIRE, of the three possible deterrents studied—the 21 year-old drinking age, 0.08 legal BAC limit, and automatic license revocation—the 21 year-old drinking age was found to be the least effective, and by a considerable margin. Of course, the fact that this analysis cites data from no later than 1990 might call its application to current circumstances into serious question (or would anyone like to predict the outcome of the 2008 elections based upon data no more recent than 1990?). But in any case, it is important to look beyond the “sound bite” and the headlines. When one does, the claim of effectiveness is far less convincing.