- Laws against private possession and/or consumption
- Internal possession laws
- Laws against furnishing alcohol to people under 21
- Dram shop liability laws
- Social host liability laws (civil or criminal)
- Keg registration
- Use alcohol and lose your license ("use and lose" laws)
- Zero-tolerance laws for DUI
- Fake ID laws and ID scanner laws
- Age limits for serving alcohol
If these laws (and by extension, the 21 drinking age itself) did work as intended, one would expect the effectiveness of these laws to show up not only in traffic fatality statistics (which are the tip of a very large iceberg), but also in surveys of teen drinking as well, especially when recent data are studied. A 2014 study done by Vanessa H. Sacks et al. of Child Trends examined the relationship between 14 different ancillary laws (and alcohol taxes) and both current drinking (any in the past 30 days) and "binge" drinking (5+ drinks "within a couple of hours") among high school students from 2005-2011 as reported on the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) of those years. The 14 laws studied were the following:
- Laws against consumption of alcohol by people under 21
- Exceptions to possession laws
- Exceptions to furnishing laws
- Social host liability laws
- BAC limits for people under 21 (i.e. zero-tolerance laws)
- Use-and-lose laws (strength measured in three different ways)
- ID scanners in retail locations
- Keg registration
- Age limits for serving alcohol
- Beer excise taxes in 2005
- Distilled spirits excise taxes in 2005
- Beer taxes were significantly and negatively associated with both current drinking and "binge" drinking rates. No surprise there, as this dovetails nicely with the reams of evidence that have found similar results. (Distilled spirits taxes showed no correlation either way, but that apparently null result is likely due to multicollinearity since beer and liquor taxes are highly correlated with each other).
- Keg registration laws were significantly and negatively correlated with current drinking, but not "binge" drinking, in one of two models. This result should probably be interpreted with caution though, given how multiple other studies have found a positive correlation between keg registration and "alcohol-related" youth traffic fatalities.
- Use-and-lose laws (i.e. driver's license penalties for mere possession or consumption of alcohol) showed a positive correlation with current drinking, that is, such laws seemed to perversely increase teen drinking.
- And the real kicker: after controlling for drinking rates in previous years and the number of ancillary laws in previous years, states with a greater total number of such policies perversely had higher rates of both current and "binge" drinking. But drinking rates in previous years did not predict the number of policies in place in later years, thus ruling out the possibility of reverse causation.
The drinking age of 21 is tolitharianism. It's oppressive in that it prohibits something that 18-20 year old people should be allowed to do, which is to drink alcoholic beverages responsibly. Regardless of whether ancillary laws work or not, one thing is for sure, which is that the National Minimum Legal Drinking Age Act should be repealed. Furthermore, states and territories should lower the drinking age to 18-19. Anciliary laws are more oppressive than the drinking age of 21 itself. Internal possession laws are tyrannical laws that should be repealed immediately. For young adults and young people in this country, it is a tolitharian state for them. It's time to treat young adults like adults and not like children anymore. Down with oppression.
ReplyDeleteIt is totalitarian and Orwellian, and the ancillary laws are indeed often worse than the primarr laws they are designed to prop up.
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