Lithuania Study Finds Raising Drinking Age Did Not Save Lives After All

Lest anyone speciously claim that Lithuania's raising of the their drinking age from 18 to 20 effective January 1, 2018 somehow saved lives, keep in mind that in 2017 they also greatly raised their alcohol taxes, banned alcohol advertising, and greatly cut trading hours for alcohol sales in 2018.  So once again, we see a great deal of confounding here.  

In fact, one recent study found that once such confounders were adjusted for, any supposed lifesaving effect of the drinking age hike itself on 18-19 year olds disappeared, implying that it was a spurious effect.  The study looked at all-cause deaths, which is probably the most bias-free measurement of the "final bill".  And the drop in deaths was actually larger in 20-21 year olds (who were already too old to have been affected at that time*) than for 18-19 year olds or 15-17 year olds. Relative to the former group, the effect was null, and interestingly no "trickle-down" effect was observed for 15-17 year olds either.  And controlling for alcohol taxes and GDP also rendered the net effect null as well.

Thus, raising the drinking age any higher than 18 is very unlikely to save lives on balance.  But raising alcohol taxes, etc. is very likely to do so, for all ages.

QED

*NOTE:  If many years of post-hike data were observed, it would probably have been better to use a slightly older age group (e.g. 22-23, 23-24, or 24-25 year olds) instead as the control group, since previous studies have found that mortality is often shifted to the age group just above the new drinking age.  However, since just one year of post-hike data was included, the choice of control group remains largely appropriate for such short-term effects, and in any case the relative results were in the "wrong" direction even if mortality were displaced as such.