One question that our movement frequently has to field is whether lowering the drinking age to 19 is a better idea than lowering it to 18. And our answer is always the same: unless 19 also happens be the age of majority, there is no good reason why the drinking age should be any higher than 18, period. And in 47 states and DC (Alabama (19), Nebraska (19), Mississippi (21) are the odd-ones-out), the age of majority is 18. And if you're old enough to go to war, you're old enough to go to the bar. 'Nuff said.
Yes, but....won't that result in 18 year olds buying alcohol for their younger friends? Surely 19 would be better in that regard since most 19 year olds are out of high school, right? Wrong. The argument is technically true, but it nonetheless misses the point by a long shot. Last I checked, people under 18 are still getting their hands on alcohol even with a drinking age of 21, and banning 18 year olds from drinking solely to prevent them from supplying their younger friends is inherently unjust. Besides, there are other ways to discourage 18 year olds from supplying their younger friends with booze or throwing high-school keggers:
- We could put a cap on how much alcohol an 18-20 year old can purchase in one transaction or day. For example, no kegs or cases, and no more than an 18 pack of beer, 1 gallon of wine, or one fifth of liquor per transaction, and no more than one transaction in any 24 hour period.
- We could ban 18 year olds from purchasing alcohol during the school day, and ban any high school student from showing up to school under the influence of alcohol.
- We could toughen the penalties for buying or furnishing alcohol to people under 18.
- We could ban off-premise sales to 18 year olds unless either a) a person 19 or older is present with them, or b) they show a college or military ID, or a high school diploma or GED.
And none of these things would really create an undue burden on anyone, while still preserving most if not all of the purported benefits of setting the drinking age at 19 or higher compared with 18. As for that last item on the list, we had thought of that one very recently. It seems that back in 1981,
Virginia had experimented with raising only the off-premise (i.e. store) purchase age to 19 while leaving it at 18 for on-premise (i.e. bar and restaurant) sales. But they barely even gave it a chance, as two years later in 1983, they raised it to 19 for on-premise sales as well, and then to 21 in 1985. Granted, setting the off-premise purchase age higher than the on-premise age may have created a perverse incentive to drive after drinking, especially in rural areas. But giving 18 year olds the option to buy alcohol off-premise when accompanied by someone over 19 would remove that perverse incentive, while still reducing the supposed "trickle-down" effect since a person under 18 would still have to find someone 19 or older to make the transaction possible.
In other words, there is no good reason to set the drinking age any higher than 18. Period.
