Still More Things Underage Drinkers Didn't Do

In the past, we would chronicle and discuss countless examples of drinkers OVER 21 behaving badly, as "Things Underage Drinkers Didn't Do".  Time to do it again:

In the past few months or so in America:

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly crash her car into a birthday party, killing two children. 

An underage drinker did NOT punch a flight attendant multiple times after drinking rum, causing the flight to divert, and then have the chutzpah to spit on and groin-kick the police officers who escorted him off the flight.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly BITE a flight attendant on an international flight, forcing the flight to divert.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly drive 105 mph with a BAC of 0.23 and crash into and kill another driver.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly drive in the wrong direction on I-95 and kill a young nursing student. 

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly steal a car and then crash it into two police cars.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly run over an elderly woman with a snowplow in a parking lot, killing her.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly bite the finger off of a wedding guest who tried to restrain him after he inappropriately touched another guest.

An underage drinker did NOT have the chutzpah to get herself arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct at an AA meeting of all places.  Not to be outdone in chutzpah, she kicked the police officers and added insult to injury by puking in the patrol car.

An underage drinker did NOT pull a gun on another parent at a youth football game because of something they said, then argued with police and threatened to kill the K9 too.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is just the tip of the iceberg...

Cannabis Legalization Still Not A Disaster After All

The latest evidence finds that cannabis legalization was NOT a disaster after all, and that essentially NONE of the prohibitionists' histrionic fears had come to pass.  Yes, really.  That's the good news.

The bad news?  Legalization has been half-assed thus far, and we need to finish the job. Yesterday.  First of all, we need to fully legalize it at the federal level and get it out of the ridiculous legal limbo it has been in for years.  Secondly, we need to treat it no more stringently than alcohol or tobacco, not tax it excessively, and make retail licenses cheaper and easier to get, to reduce barriers to entry.  And finally, we need to reduce the age limit to 18.  Do all of these things, and the black market will wither on the vine.

So what are we waiting for?

What Should The Driving Age Be? (Updated Re-Post)

One thing that Twenty-One Debunked has been slacking on lately is the other main age limit in the drinking/driving equation--the driving age.  While we have not always been very clear on that particular issue and generally left it on the back burner, it merits attention nonetheless.

There is indeed an interesting paradox compared with the drinking age.  With the notable exceptions of Canada (permit age 14, 15, or 16 depending on province, license age 16), Australia (16 1/2 in one state, 17 or 18 in the rest), and New Zealand (16), every other industrialized (and semi-industrialized) nation on Earth has a driver license age of 17 or higher, and most are 18.  Yet these countries all have drinking ages lower than the USA, and nearly all of them are 18 or lower.  Many are as low as 16 (though a few European nations have recently raised the drinking age to 18). And most of these countries have far lower rates of traffic deaths, alcohol-related or otherwise, than the USA.

On the surface, that strongly recommends in favor of raising the driving age in conjunction with lowering the drinking age, particularly setting the driving age higher than the drinking age instead of the other way around.  At one time, the founder of Twenty-One Debunked advocated doing exactly that.  But such an approach glosses over some serious issues involving the car culture of the USA.  First, with our inferior public transportation infrastructure, we cannot compare the situation here to Europe.  Canada or Australia would be a much better comparison.  Secondly, the odds of us ever lowering the drinking age below 18 are slim to none, and we no longer consider such a goal worthwhile.  But most importantly, the evidence that a much higher driving age would make roads any safer is questionable at best.

Renowned sociologist and youth-rights activist Mike Males did a famous study in 2006 that found that California's tough new graduated driver license (GDL) law implemented in 1996 did reduce traffic deaths among 16-17 year olds--but also increased traffic deaths for 18-19 year olds enough to more than offset the apparent lifesaving effect among younger drivers.  In other words, it merely delayed such deaths, or worse, led to a net increase.  He also found in another study that much of the increased risk among younger drivers is actually the result of poverty, not "immaturity" or "underdeveloped brains".  The rest can largely be chalked up to inexperience, and the difference between genders (males being worse) dwarfs any unaccounted for age difference.  While his research was seen as controversial among the establishment and many disputed it, it nonetheless pans out rather well.  A 2011 national study by Masten et al. confirms Mike Males' general findings: after adjusting for potential confounders, stronger GDL laws (compared with weaker ones) were associated with lower fatalities for 16 year olds but higher fatalities for 18 year olds (and possibly 19 year olds as well), and the net effect for 16-19 year olds as a whole was not significantly different from the null.  In other words, it was a wash overall.

Of course, it is true that 16 year old first-year drivers do have significantly higher fatal crash risks that 17 year old first-year drivers--though 17 year old novices are apparently no worse than 18 or 19 year old novices.  (There were apparently not enough first-year drivers 20 and older to make a valid comparison for them at the time, but I imagine it would be very similar.)  Thus, it is possible that raising the driving age to 17 would in fact result in a net reduction in traffic deaths over the lifecycle compared with the status quo, while raising it to 18 or higher would likely only delay deaths compared with a driving age of 17.  New Jersey, for example, has a driving age of 16 for permit and 17 for license--the highest in the nation besides NYC with a de facto age of 18--and their teen traffic death rates are, contrary to stereotypes, lower than neighboring states (interestingly even before their GDL law was implemented, and declined further after that).  Compared with Connecticut, New Jersey's fatality rate was much lower for 16 year olds, slightly higher for 17 year olds, and slightly lower for 18 year olds, so the net effect was death reduction.  This was true in all time periods studied, back in the day (even long before GDL in either state) as well as more recently.  So being a year behind may not necessarily negate the benefits of delaying entry to licensed driving--though raising the age any higher than that might. 

(New Jersey's GDL, unlike most states, applies night and passenger restrictions to all new drivers under 21 rather than 18.  And for drivers over 21, there is still a GDL, but minus the night and passenger restrictions.  While some form of provisional license is a wise idea for new drivers of all ages, Twenty-One Debunked does NOT support any such night and passenger restrictions on drivers over 18, and only very grudgingly tolerates them before 18.  In NJ, the best that one could say is that these restrictions "flatten the curve", to put it in the lingua franca of the 2020s)

Meanwhile, Alberta (Canada), which is fairly rural sets their permit age at 14 and license age at 16, and at any age one must have their provisional license (albeit with far fewer restrictions than the USA) for two years and be violation and accident free for the last year before upgrading to the full license.  The road test is of course more difficult than in the USA.  And their drinking age is 18.  And they seem none the worse for wear in terms of traffic casualties.

So what should the driving age be in the USA?  The optimal age may in fact vary depending on how rural or urban a state or region is, but we do not believe it should be any higher than 16 for permit and 17 for license.  And of course we believe that the drinking age should be 18.  Additionally, we should definitely make the road test tougher like it is in other countries, and improve our driver education courses as well.  Raising the alcohol taxes and the gas tax would likely save many lives as well.  But on balance, raising the driving age any higher than 17 in this country would likely do more harm than good. And while GDLs in general are likely beneficial on balance, there is likely such a thing as too strict--particularly when it only targets drivers below a certain age (as opposed to all new drivers like in many other countries like Canada), and such a poorly designed one can actually backfire.

Emancipation For A Post-Capitalist Society

One thing that needs to be better refined for a post-capitalist, protopian future is the process of "emancipation of minors," to quote the official term of art despite its derogatory connotations.  Here are some ideas from Twenty-One Debunked:

First and foremost, let's jettison the terms "emancipation" and especially "minors".  The former has historical connotations related to slavery, while the latter is an ageist slur that implies that young people below some arbitrary age are somehow less important than those above that age limit, as even Hillary Clinton famously pointed out in the 1990s.  Replace the former with "release (of restrictions)" and the latter with "youth" or "underage".  For the same reasons, the terms "access" and "custody" have already been largely replaced by "contact" and "residence", respectively, in most of the Anglosphere. 

Secondly, we need to follow "Alberta rules" and set the default age of majority (legal adulthood) at no higher than 18, and NO age limit for anything can be set even a day higher than 18, except with truly extraordinary justification (like for being President or VP of a country with hair-triggered nuclear weapons and other WMDs), or for senior citizen stuff.  And for any (non-convicted) individuals over 18 to have even one iota of their civil rights abridged or taken away even temporarily, the onus is inherently on the state to prove that the individual is incompetent, NOT on the individual to prove their own competence.  Anything else is inherently ageist, classist, racist (by extension of and intersection with classism), and/or ableist in practice, if not also in theory as well. 

Thirdly, while for young people below the default age of majority, the onus would by definition be on them as individuals to prove their own competence, it needs to be done in a fair and just manner and as objectively as possible.  And doing so needs to also provide at least some sort of alternatives to the traditional and narrow (and increasingly outmoded) milestones of adulthood for generations past.

Twenty-One Debunked's early thought is to have two categories of release:  1) "conditional release", which begins the process, and can still be revoked if the conditions are not met, and 2) "final release", which will happen after a year or two following conditional release, or age 18, whichever occurs sooner, and cannot be revoked.  The minimum requirement to achieve conditional release should be 1) the completion of Tanner Stage 5 of puberty plus a mental age of 16 or higher as measured by any standardized IQ test, college entrance exam, or graduation exit exam, OR 2) a chronological age of 16, whichever occurs sooner.  The minimum age to achieve final release should be a chronological age of 16 or at least one year since conditional release began, whichever occurs later.  All of the other details are of course not cut-and-dried, and should be flexible.  (And unlike Dr. Robert Epstein's paradigm, let's NOT follow the DMV model!  Only the most left-brained, out of touch, ivory-tower academic elites could think that is somehow a good or wise idea, because reasons.)

And when Universal Basic Income (UBI) is eventually implemented, only upon final release (or 18, whichever is sooner) should an individual receive their own unconditional UBI directly.  Rather, upon conditional release, they should receive a "conditional stipend" instead.  (Before any kind of release, by default their share of UBI would go directly to the young person's primary parent or guardian.)

Of course, for as long as we live in "mass society", for all of its myriad flaws, there probably still should be some sort of hard age limits (i.e. purchase ages for alcohol and other psychoactive substances, age of consent, working in truly and inherently dangerous jobs, etc.) that remain true regardless of one's individual status, but nearly all age limits can be at least partially replaced in that regard.  And again, no such age limits should ever be higher than 18.

So what are we waiting for?

What To Do About Lockdown-Induced Arrested Or Delayed Development?

Four years after the official start of the pandemic, two years after practically all restrictions were lifted, and roughly one year after it was declared to be over, the consequences of the lockdowns, quarantines, school closures, mask mandates, and other restrictions can still be seen in its aftermath long after these restrictions were lifted.  This is especially true among children and young people, whose development has been delayed, stunted, or arrested as a result.

It is a truly massive elephant in the room!

Now, the temptation would be to knee-jerkedly raise age limits for various things in response to this, up to and including even the age of majority itself.  You know some people want to.  But that would only exacerbate such developmental delays in practice by kicking the can even further down the road.  The specious idea that "kids today are infantilized, so let's infantilize them even further, because reasons" is absolutely insane.  If anything, we should be doing the opposite and lowering or even abolishing various age limits (within reason), and giving young people a megadose of independence.  That is, go "straight from zero to the Fourth of July", like the song by the band The Killers says, in both the real AND virtual worlds, and certainly no later than age 16.  And at the very, very least, seriously, let's NOT add any more restrictions whatsoever on the already most heavily monitored and (in many ways) restricted generation of children and teens in all of recorded history.

Infancy cannot be re-run.  Childhood cannot be re-run.  And, try as so many adults may, adolescence cannot be re-run either.  The best thing to do is to build a time machine and go back to March 2020 and make it so the lockdowns, school closures, etc. never happened, and that we adopted the "flu strategy" per the original pandemic plan from the get-go per the wisdom of the ages.  Failing that, the second best thing is to rectify things as best we can, yesterday.

The latest attempts to abruptly restrict or revoke teens' access to the virtual world will leave a "social media-shaped hole" in the lives of millions that will most likely NOT be filled with anything good. And after decades of gradually restricting and reducing their access to the real world, it would be a bait-and-switch to disingenuously claim that children and teens will now all of sudden be given more access to the real world in order to fill the void.  Most likely, they will lose access to both the real AND virtual worlds, and increased access to the real world will NOT be forthcoming for a while.

True, the virtual world is no substitute for the real world, as we have all learned the hard way during lockdown.  But as renowned sociologist and youth rights activist Mike Males says, "The dangers of both the virtual and real worlds have been wildly exaggerated. Teens don’t need more restrictions."  Truer words have never been spoken.

And will today's youngest generations, and future generations, ever forgive us?

(Mic drop)

UPDATE:  What would be a good shorthand to describe what needs to be done?  Twenty-One Debunked thinks we should call it the "Reverse Icelandic Model", that is, the reverse of the vaunted Icelandic Prevention Model (IPM).  When the pandemic and related restrictions and isolation intersected with the existing IPM that had been in place for two decades, it really did a number on the mental health of young people in Iceland.

The View From 2030 (At The Latest)

At the rate things are going these days, the following is a very likely conversation that will happen many times over in 2030, at the latest.  At least in the USA:

18 Year Old: "I'm an adult now.  Why am I still not allowed to go on social media or have a smartphone?"

Parent:  "Because the law now forbids both until you are 21, and the law is the law."

18 Year Old:  "But Canadian, Australian, British, and European people my age are allowed to.  As are people my age in almost every other country as well."

Parent:  "Well, we're not Canada, Australia, Europe, or any other country for that matter.  Different cultures and such.  America has too many problems as it is."

18 Year Old:  "But your generation was allowed to at a much earlier age than me!"

Parent:  "That was then.  Life was cheap back then.  We know better now.  And your grandparents were allowed to drink and smoke too at your age, which we obviously no longer allow either, so your point is?"

18 Year Old:  "And they were allowed to play outside with their friends unsupervised even when they were in single digits too, or so I have heard.  Grandma and Grandpa actually got to enjoy the real world before they forgot how to, while you got to enjoy the virtual world at least.  My generation had neither."

Parent:  "Well, the real world was much safer back then compared to now, and as for me, we didn't know just how dangerous the virtual world really was."

18 Year Old:  "Statistics say otherwise".

Parent:  "You need to watch more news and true crime documentaries before you can argue statistics.  It's really a jungle out there now. In any case, I see your statistics, and I raise you a "Because I said so!""

18 Year Old: "Statistics beat logical fallacies and anecdotes every time.  Regardless, it's not fair in what is supposed to be a free country."

Parent:  "Life isn't fair.  Deal with it!"

18 Year Old:  "But I'm literally old enough to get married, and yet I can't even post my own wedding on Facebook?  That doesn't make any sense at all."

Parent:  "If you're so mature and such an adult, then why don't you get married right now?" (Tries to trick the young person into saying they are "too young".)

18 Year Old:  "Because as an adult, I know that just because you CAN do something, it doesn't mean that you SHOULD.  Just like you raised me".

Parent:  (speechless)

18 Year Old:  (Mic drop)

One Silver Lining Of The Pandemic And Its Aftermath

Four years after the pandemic began, and roughly one year after the very last traces of the illiberal restrictions have been removed, one can observe that one particular and very platitudinous phrase seems to have vanished entirely from our lexicon.  It was a phrase that long predated the pandemic, and first became common about 40 years ago, which was used to cover any number of illiberal policies, most notably the 21 drinking age.  So what is it?

"If it saves even ONE life, it's worth it"

Those nine words have clearly been a very, very slippery slope towards totalitarianism, which really came to a head during the pandemic.  And both sides of the lockdown and mandates debate have since given that idea up for the time being recently.  Thus, we may actually have a chance temporarily to finally end other illiberal policies like the 21 drinking age and similar abominations.  Pendulum Theory can therefore be used to our advantage. 

Better thing to replace it with:  "Safety Third".  So what's first and second then?  Liberty and justice for all, not necessarily in that order.

What are we waiting for?

Does Cannabis Really Cause Heart Attacks And Strokes?

A new study is making the rounds claiming so, apparently.  And unlike most previous studies on the matter, this one was not only very large, but was also able to fully tease out the massive confounding factor of tobacco as well.  It was run on both a representative sample as well as re-run on the subset of never-tobacco users, and controlled for many other variables as well.  So what did it find?

Daily cannabis users had a 25% higher risk of heart attack and 42% higher risk for stroke compared with nonusers overall.  For never tobacco users who were used cannabis daily, the odds ratios were higher, but confidence intervals were also much wider as well.  As for nondaily users, the numbers were proportionally much lower relative to days used per month, with those using weekly or less having barely any statistically increased risk for either cardiovascular outcome relative to nonusers.

And to that we give a resounding....(yawn).

Now, we all know that correlation is not causation, and this was a cross-sectional study that could not possibly rule out every other explanation for the association, nor determine temporality of the association.  And given how in all of the analyses of the study, the odds ratios were either 1) below 2.0, 2) had fairly wide confidence intervals, or 3) both, it is possible that the results were still at least partly (if not entirely) due to selection bias, reporting bias, or residual or unmeasured confounding, if not chance.  For example, while tobacco (which increased risk), alcohol (which appeared to decrease risk), and a host of individual health and demographic variables were statistically controlled for, the use or abuse of any other psychoactive substances (licit or illicit) was NOT controlled for, nor were any dietary factors.

And of course, as the study was done on BRFSS survey data, another major limitation was that it, by definition, only measured cardiovascular outcomes among those who lived to tell about it.  While longitudinal cohort studies in the past generally did not find any robust and significant differences in all-cause death rates between cannabis users in general versus nonusers, unlike in the infamous case of tobacco which has been well-known for decades.

In fact, interestingly enough, when the sample was restricted to those who never used tobacco, while daily cannabis users still fared worse, the lowest (best) point estimates for each of the cardiovascular outcomes studied were actually found among the nondaily cannabis users, not the nonusers, in the unadjusted results. And of course, that nuance was glossed over and only mentioned briefly.

That said, regardless, as a wise man once said, I have still never met a daily (or near-daily) cannabis user that could not benefit from cutting back a bit.  In other words, something about Aristotle and moderation comes to mind.  Food for thought indeed. 

America Is Still Drowning In The Bottle

Americans are still drowning in the bottle to this day, and paying a heavy price for it.  While the pandemic and especially the lockdowns were clearly gasoline on the fire, that fire has been burning for a very long time before that.  The ageist abomination that is 21 drinking age, and all of its illiberal ancillary laws, has clearly done NOTHING to stem that tide in the long run.  And it's truly no coincidence that alcohol (of all types, but especially hard liquor) is now the cheapest it has been in many, many decades relative to inflation and (especially) income.  That's largely because alcohol taxes have greatly lagged behind and were thus eroded by inflation in recent decades, with the tax on distilled spirits lagging the very most of all.

To quote the latest CDC report on the matter:

Average annual number of deaths from excessive alcohol use, including partially and fully alcohol-attributable conditions, increased approximately 29% from 137,927 during 2016–2017 to 178,307 during 2020–2021, and age-standardized death rates increased from approximately 38 to 48 per 100,000 population. During this time, deaths from excessive drinking among males increased approximately 27%, from 94,362 per year to 119,606, and among females increased approximately 35%, from 43,565 per year to 58,701.

Thus, as Twenty-One Debunked has long advocated, we need to raise the alcohol taxes across the board, and harmonize them all based on alcohol content.  To raise just the beer tax alone, for example, would result in drinkers simply switching to liquor, similar to how minimum unit pricing in Scotland disproportionately affected strong cider and perversely incentivized switching to liquor.  MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) has long heavily beaten the drum (though not so much recently) for raising the beer tax, but has also largely been strangely silent on the distilled spirits tax.  Perhaps some alleged palm-greasing from both the liquor industry and/or foreign beer industry may be at work here?  Things that (should) make you go, hmmmm.....

We advocate raising all federal alcohol taxes to about $30 per proof-gallon, equal to the inflation-adjusted value for the distilled spirits tax in 1991 (in 2023 dollars), the last time it was raised. That would add anywhere between one and two dollars (depending on alcohol content), to the price of a six-pack of beer, a gallon of wine, or a fifth of liquor, while also incentivizing reduced-alcohol beers and wines.  And while that may not be very much of a difference to a moderate drinker, for heavy drinkers it sure adds up, as it also does for the youngest drinkers as well.  And contrary to what some believe, the price elasticity of demand for alcohol is NOT zero or trivial, and the public health benefits of higher alcohol taxes and prices are well-known and established.

To sweeten the deal, we support a relatively reduced tax rate for the smallest producers, and we also support tax incentives for producers who fortify their beverages with thiamine (vitamin B1) and perhaps other vitamins as well.  And we would also support phasing in alcohol tax hikes a bit more gradually if that is the only way to get them passed.  But raise these taxes, we certainly must.

(And, of course, we also also lower the drinking age to 18 yesterday, full stop.  We are still Twenty-One Debunked, after all.)

It is true that Thomas Jefferson once famously said, "no nation is drunken where wine is cheap".  Granted.  But the second half of that very same quote was, "and none sober when the dearness [expensiveness] of wine substitutes ardent [distilled] spirits as the common beverage.  It is, in truth, the only antidote to the bane of whiskey."  And now in 2024, it would seem that ALL categories of alcoholic beverages are too cheap for America's own good, and a fortiori for ardent (distilled) spirits today.

Cannabis Legalization Is STILL NOT Crazy-Making In Canada OR The USA

Reefer Madness? More like Reefer Sanity. Yet another study finds that cannabis legalization in Canada (where the age limit is 18 or 19 depending on the province*) did NOT result in any increase in cannabis-related psychosis.  This dovetails nicely with several previous studies in both Canada and the USA.

In other words, the remaining prohibitionists and fearmongers are looking less and less like Cassandra, and more and more like Chicken Little now.

(*Quebec had initially set it at 18 in 2018, but they raised it to 21 in January 2020, with no grandfather clause.  Alberta remains 18 to this day, and all other provinces are 19, mostly matching the drinking ages.)