The Drinking Age Should Not Be Lowered

By Misty Moyse and Melanie Fonder

As students head back to school, more than 100 college and university presidents have signed on to a misguided initiative that uses deliberately misleading information to confuse the public on the effectiveness of the 21 law [setting the minimum drinking age at 21]. The initiative is led by another organization with a political agenda of lowering the drinking age in the name of reducing college binge drinking.

POLITICIANS SUPPORT THE CURRENT MAXIMUM DRINKING AGE

Top science, medical and public health experts as well as congressional and state leaders agree on the effectiveness of the 21 minimum drinking age law in saving lives.

University of Miami President and former U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, said maintaining the legal drinking age at 21 is a socially and medically sound policy that helps parents, schools and law enforcement protect our youth from the potentially life-threatening effects of underage drinking. “As a three-time university president, I can tell you that losing a student to an alcohol-related tragedy is one of the hardest and most heart-rending experiences imaginable,” Shalala said. “Signing this initiative does serious harm to the education and enforcement efforts on our campuses and ultimately endangers young lives even more. I ask every higher education leader who has signed to reconsider. I am old enough to remember life on our campuses before the [age] 21 … drinking rule. It was horrible.”

“The traffic safety and public health benefits of the 21 minimum drinking age law have been well established, with the Department of Transportation estimating nearly 1,000 lives saved each year as a result. I strongly support this lifesaving law, and will not consider any effort to repeal or weaken it in any way,” said Congressman James L. Oberstar (D-MN), Chairman, U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

“Drunk driving needlessly kills thousands of young people every year. That’s why I wrote a law to create a national drinking age of 21 and why we fight so hard to reduce drunk driving and save lives on our roads,” Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) said. “This small minority of college administrators wants to undo years of success—that defies common sense. We need to do all we can to protect the national drinking age—a law that saves the lives of drivers, passengers and pedestrians across the country each year.”

“Countless lives have been saved since Congress raised the national minimum drinking age to 21 in 1984. We need to maintain this important law and the life-saving protection it gives our teens and others on the roads,” said U.S. Senator David Vitter (R-LA), a member of the Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure of the U.S. Senate committee on Environment & Public Works.

INDUSTRY EXPERTS SUPPORT THE CURRENT LAW

Ronald M. Davis, Immediate Past President of the AMA said, “It is impossible to ignore the scientific evidence demonstrating the dangers of underage drinking. A young adult’s brain is a work in progress, marked by significant development in areas of the brain responsible for learning, memory, complex thinking, planning, inhibition and emotional regulation. If we lower the age at which young adults are legally allowed to purchase alcohol, we are lowering the age of those who have easy access to alcohol and shifting responsibility to high school educators. The science simply does not support lowering the drinking age.”

“Age 21 drinking laws are effective in preventing deaths and injuries,” said NTSB Acting Chairman Mark V. Rosenker. “Repealing them is a terrible idea. It would be a national tragedy to turn back the clock and jeopardize the lives of more teens.”

Adrian Lund, president of IIHS, said, “This initiative aims to lower the drinking age without proposing a realistic substitute. It reflects ignorance about the years of research comprising the scientific justification for 21 laws. Sound policy should be based on sound science. What is the evidence that education programs would be an effective replacement for minimum drinking age laws? There is none. If states lower the drinking age again, more teens will drink and drive and more will die.”

THE LAW HAS BOTH PUBLIC AND SCIENTIFIC SUPPORT

The public strongly disagrees with efforts to lower the drinking age. According to a new survey released today [August 19, 2008] by Nationwide Insurance, 78 percent of adults support 21 as the minimum drinking age and 72 percent believe lowering the drinking age would make alcohol more accessible to youth.

“While advocates argue a lower drinking age will curb teen binge drinking, our survey shows only 14 percent of Americans agree and 47 percent believe it will actually make a huge problem worse,” said Bill Windsor, associate vice president of safety for Nationwide. “Americans feel so strongly about teen binge drinking [that] more than half say they are less likely to vote for a politician who supports lowering the legal limit or to send their child to a known ‘party school’.”

As one of the most studied public health laws in history, the scientific research from more than 50 high-quality studies all found that the 21 law saves lives. In addition, studies show that the 21 law causes those under the age of 21 to drink less and to continue to drink less throughout their 20s. The earlier [that] youth drink (average age of first drink is about 16), the more likely they will become dependent on alcohol and drive drunk later in life.

COLLEGES SEEN TO BE PART OF THE PROBLEM

There is a perfect storm of affluence, opportunity and tolerance on college campuses. Access to alcohol on college campuses is a particular problem—where underage students drink because they can and they are in a high-risk environment where enforcement of the law varies widely.

In fact, research shows that more than 30 percent of college students abuse alcohol and six percent are dependent on alcohol—rates much higher than for young adults who are not in college. Research also shows that the problem of binge drinking is worse among college-age students in college versus those who are not in college.

“By signing onto this initiative, these presidents have made the 21 law nearly unenforceable on their campuses. In fact, I call into question whether or not these campuses are bothering to enforce the 21 drinking age,” said Dean-Mooney.

COLLEGE COMMUNITIES CAN BE PART OF THE SOLUTION

Some universities are taking strong steps to enforce the 21 law and change the drinking culture in their campus communities. Solutions to the problem are centered on enforcement of the 21 law, sanctions for adults providing alcohol to those under 21, changing the environment found on many college campuses and tightening alcohol policies on campuses, and working with local establishments in college communities selling alcohol to sell responsibly and to ensure those under 21 are not being served.

The U.S. Surgeon General issued a call to action to solve the underage and college binge drinking problem in 2007. Several steps have been taken by communities, and MADD will engage parents and other health and safety leaders this fall on the topic to ensure parents specifically are armed with the tools they need to combat underage drinking early—before peer pressure begins.

Dean-Mooney added, “It does not make sense to increase access to alcohol when there are already so many problems with underage drinking. As it stands, about 5,000 people under age 21 die each year due to underage drinking. This is not to mention the sexual assaults, violence, and injuries.”

The Drinking Age Should Be Lowered

By John M. McCardell

One year ago [in 2008], a group of college and university presidents and chancellors, eventually totaling 135, issued a statement that garnered national attention.

UNDERAGE DRINKING IS ON THE RISE, DESPITE THE LAW

The “Amethyst Initiative” put a debate proposition before the public—”Resolved: That [age 21 as the minimum] drinking age is not working.” It offered, in much the way a grand jury performs its duties, sufficient evidence for putting the proposition to the test. It invited informed and dispassionate public debate and committed the signatory institutions to encouraging that debate. And it called on elected officials not to continue assuming that, after 25 years, the status quo could not be challenged, even improved.

One year later, the drinking age debate continues, and new research reinforces the presidential impulse. Just this summer [2009] a study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry revealed that, among college-age males, binge drinking is unchanged from its levels of 1979; that among non-college women it has increased by 20 percent; and that among college women it has increased by 40 percent.

Remarkably, the counterintuitive conclusion drawn by the investigators, and accepted uncritically by the media, including editorials in the New York Times and the Washington Post, is that the study proves that raising the drinking age to 21 has been a success.

More recently, a study of binge drinking published in the Journal of the American Medical Association announced that “despite efforts at prevention, the prevalence of binge drinking among college students is continuing to rise, and so are the harms associated with it.”

Worse still, a related study has shown that habits formed at 18 die hard: “For each year studied, a greater percentage of 21- to 24-year-olds [those who were of course once 18, 19 and 20] engaged in binge drinking and driving under the influence of alcohol.”

CHANGING A CULTURE OF DRUNK DRIVING

Yet, in the face of mounting evidence that those young adults age 18 to 20 toward whom the drinking age law has been directed are routinely—indeed in life- and health-threatening ways—violating it, there remains a belief in the land that a minimum drinking age of 21 has been a “success.” And elected officials are periodically reminded of a provision in the 1984 law that continues to stifle any serious public debate in our country’s state legislative chambers: Any state that sets its drinking age lower than 21 forfeits 10 percent of its annual federal highway appropriation.

But it’s not 1984 anymore.

This statement may seem obvious, but not necessarily. In 1984 Congress passed and the president signed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act. The act, which raised the drinking age to 21 under threat of highway fund withholding, sought to address the problem of drunken-driving fatalities. And indeed, that problem was serious.

States that lowered their ages during the 1970s and did nothing else to prepare young adults to make responsible decisions about alcohol witnessed an alarming increase in alcohol-related traffic fatalities. It was as though the driving age were lowered but no drivers education were provided. The results were predictable.

ADDRESSING A NEW PROBLEM

Now, 25 years later [in 2009], we are in a much different, and better, place. Thanks to the effective public advocacy of organizations [such as] Mothers Against Drunk Driving, we are far more aware of the risks of drinking and driving. Automobiles are much safer.

Seatbelts and airbags are mandatory. The “designated driver” is now a part of our vocabulary. And more and more states are mandating ignition interlocks for first-time DUI offenders, perhaps the most effective way to get drunken drivers off the road.

And the statistics are encouraging. Alcohol-related fatalities have declined over the last 25 years. Better still, they have declined in all age groups, though the greatest number of deaths occurs at age 21, followed by 22 and 23. We are well on the way to solving a problem that vexed us 25 years ago.

The problem today is different. The problem today is reckless, goal-oriented alcohol consumption that all too often takes place in clandestine locations, where enforcement has proven frustratingly difficult. Alcohol consumption among young adults is not taking place in public places or public view or in the presence of other adults who might help model responsible behavior. But we know it is taking place.

CLANDESTINE BINGE DRINKING

If not in public, then where? The college presidents who signed the Amethyst Initiative know where. It happens in “pre-gaming” sessions in locked dorm rooms where students take multiple shots of hard alcohol in rapid succession, before going to a social event where alcohol is not served. It happens in off-campus apartments beyond college boundaries and thus beyond the presidents’ authority; and it happens in remote fields to which young adults must drive.

And the Amethyst presidents know the deadly result: Of the 5,000 lives lost to alcohol each year by those under 21, more than 60 percent are lost OFF the roadways, according to the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse.

The principal problem of 2009 is not drunken driving. The principal problem of 2009 is clandestine binge drinking.

That is why the Amethyst presidents believe a public debate is so urgent. The law does not say drink responsibly or drink in moderation. It says don’t drink. To those affected by it, those who in the eyes of the law are, in every other respect, legal adults, it is Prohibition. And it is incomprehensible.

A DRINKING LICENSE

The principal impediment to public debate is the 10 percent highway penalty. That penalty should be waived for those states that choose to try something different, which may turn out to be something better. But merely adjusting the age—up or down—is not really the way to make a change.

We should prepare young adults to make responsible decisions about alcohol in the same way we prepare them to operate a motor vehicle: by first educating and then licensing, and permitting them to exercise the full privileges of adulthood so long as they demonstrate their ability to observe the law.

Licensing would work like drivers education—it would involve a permit, perhaps graduated, allowing the holder the privilege of purchasing, possessing and consuming alcohol, as each state determined, so long as the holder had passed an alcohol education course and observed the alcohol laws of the issuing state.

Most of the rest or the world has come out in a different place on the drinking age. The United States is one of only four countries—the others are Indonesia, Mongolia and Palau—with an age as high as 21. All others either have no minimum age or have a lower age, generally 18, with some at 16.

Young adults know that. And, in their heart of hearts, they also know that a law perceived as unjust, a law routinely violated, can over time breed disrespect for law in general.

Slowly but surely we may be seeing a change in attitude. This summer, Dr. Morris Chafetz, a distinguished psychiatrist, a member of the presidential commission that recommended raising the drinking age, and the founder of the National Institute for Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse admitted that supporting the higher drinking age is “the most regrettable decision of my entire professional career.” This remarkable statement did not receive the attention it merited.

Alcohol is a reality in the lives of young adults. We can either try to change the reality—which has been our principal focus since 1984, by imposing Prohibition on young adults 18 to 20—or we can create the safest possible environment for the reality.

A drinking age minimum of 21 has not changed the reality. It’s time to try something different.

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