One thing our movement has a habit of doing is comparing the USA to Europe for the purpose of ascertaining what the effects of a lower drinking age would be like. While there is some truth to such a comparison, the pro-21 side routinely calls us out on the important differences between here and there. For example, they have much better public transportation than we do, they are more urbanized, driving licenses are much more difficult to obtain, gas prices are much higher, and thus they are much, much less of a car culture that we are. All of which would dramatically affect traffic fatalities and skew any comparisons. As a result, Twenty-One Debunked typically prefers to make comparisons to Canada instead, which is also a car culture that is the most similar to the USA. And they have seen a similar or faster drop in traffic deaths than the USA despite NOT raising the drinking age to 21, and their traffic death rates have been consistently lower than the USA. But there is also another major car culture as well with a drinking age of 18--Australia.
In the Land Down Under, they have in fact seen a faster drop in alcohol-related traffic deaths than the USA and even Canada since 1982 despite keeping the drinking age at 18. Not only that, a recent study in Australia found essentially no link between being able to drink legally and motor vehicle accidents of any type, at least not in the state that was being studied, New South Wales. Using a regression discontinuity design similar to the sort that pro-21 researchers have been doing lately, they found no discontinuous jump in such deaths or injuries in young people upon turning 18. This stands in stark contrast to the USA, in which various pro-21 researchers have found a significant jump in alcohol-related deaths and injuries among young Americans upon turning 21, an increase that in many cases lingers well beyond one's 21st birthday.
Of course, such a phenomenon is not unique to the USA, as a jump in alcohol-related deaths and injuries has also been observed in Canada at their own respective MLDA (18 or 19, depending on the province), albeit of a shorter duration than in the USA and limited primarily to males who participate in "extreme" binge drinking. It would seem that a powder-keg effect is unfortunately an almost inevitable consequence of the very concept of a drinking age, regardless of what it is. So what does Australia do right that seems to defuse the powder keg?
Most importantly, Australia has tougher DUI laws, and tougher and more frequent enforcement of such laws. For example, not only are penalties tougher, but the BAC limit is 0.05 (as opposed to 0.08 in the USA) and they have random breath testing (RBT), which is unconstitutional in both the USA and Canada. Though one could argue that nowadays the USA effectively practices a form of "de-facto RBT" via a combination of "no-refusal" laws (i.e. the police often have a judge on speed-dial to issue a telewarrant to compel those who refuse to be tested) and often pull people over for trivial reasons and use that as an excuse to test drivers, and the initial effectiveness of RBT in Australia seems to decay over time to the level of effectiveness demonstrated by American-style sobriety checkpoints and/or roving patrols. Additionally, driver's licenses are harder to get and easier to lose over there than in the USA, and the road test there is significantly more difficult as well. Alcohol excise taxes are also higher in Australia as well. But the biggest and most salient difference is the seriousness with which they take the issue of drunk driving. You really do NOT want to get busted for DUI in the Land Down Under!
Of course, the picture down under is not entirely rosy. Australia's drinking culture is quite extreme even by American, Canadian, and British standards (though tame by New Zealand standards), and binge drinking is quite the art form over there. Indeed, even the aforementioned study found that while traffic deaths and injuries do not increase discontinuously at 18 when they become legal to drink, there is still a discontinuous increase in hospital visits and admissions for alcohol poisoning and injuries from assault at 18. But the fact that, even in a country with a more Anglo-Celtic, drink-to-get-drunk culture than the USA, it is nonetheless possible to break the link between drinking and drunk driving casualties, really speaks volumes indeed.
In other words, lowering the drinking age in the USA should really not be something to fear. But we also need to get tougher on drunk driving if we wish to continue the progress of decades past.
The pro-21 side in the United States is really part of a movement which sees young people as less than human beings. The NYRA knows this better than any organization. In the U.S., the fear and disdain of young people is widespread. This is the strongest obstacle in getting the drinking age lowered to 18 in the U.S. It is the fact that many middle-aged and old people in the U.S. fear and disdain young people. The youth rights movement needs to help erode the hostility of young people in order to make advances in youth rights.
ReplyDeleteAustralia shows that a drinking age of 18 is not a danger, in contrast to the narcissistic alarmists on the ageist side . Drunk-driving enforcement will need to increased in the U.S. if the drinking age were to be lowered to 18. Australia shows that a drinking age of 18 can be successful.