At The End Of The Day, We're Not Japan

There are a lot of wonderful things about Japan.  The culture, the food, the technology, the games, the general lack of street crime and violence, and so on are all great.  But at the same time, there are some things about Japan that would absolutely NEVER fly in America, and for very good reason.

Take their extremely strict (even by global standards, not just by American standards!) approach to DUI, for example:

• The BAC limit for driving is a mere 0.03%, where as little as ONE standard drink will almost certainly put you over the limit for at least an hour or two (effectively zero tolerance).  For ALL ages, period.
• Penalties can range from up to three years in prison, a $5000 fine, and losing one's license for at least three months (which wouldn't matter if one is locked up for three years).  And you will almost certainly lose your job as well.  Again, for as little as ONE drink before driving.  OUCH!
• And if you have the audacity to exceed 0.04% when driving, which translates to one or at most two standard drinks in a couple hours or so (depending on body weight, gender, time, pace of drinking, food, etc.), it gets even worse still:  five years in prison, a $10,000 fine, and cancellation of one's license altogether.  DOUBLE OUCH!
• Above that second threshold, though, there are no further graduated penalties at the margin:  driving after one or two drinks is treated the same as driving after ten.
• But wait, there's more!  As if that wasn't bad enough, it's NOT only the driver who is on the hook for such harsh penalties.  Anyone who allows someone to get behind the wheel after drinking even ONE drink, including the passengers and anyone who served the driver, such as in restaurants and bars, and anyone who provided a vehicle to the driver, will also face roughly the same penalties.  It is collective responsibility taken to the extreme, basically.
• Oh, and this also applies to bicycle riders as well, by the way.  (But hey, at least they don't apply it to pedestrians though, as there are no laws against drunk walking or public drunkenness there.)
• And this is all very strictly enforced, of course.

In a word, WOW!  They are so strict that bars and restaurants will simply not let you order even ONE beer unless they confirm with you first that you will not be driving home.  They even have "skipper" taxi services for hire with two drivers:  one to drive your vehicle home, and one to pick up the first driver afterwards.  (Or sometimes just one driver with an e-bike to ride themself back, and then onto the next customer.) And the popularity of non-alcoholic beers and wines has predictably skyrocketed in Japan since these laws were passed in 2002 and 2007.  

And yes, it is true that Japan saw alcohol-related traffic fatalities drop by over half instantly, and by up to 80 percent over the next few years following the passage of these super-strict laws.  Significant decreases in such casualties were seen after each of both the 2002 (i.e. lowering the BAC limit from 0.05% to 0.03%) and 2007 (penalties for passengers, servers, and vehicle lenders) law changes, and both also involved a great stiffening of DUI penalties in general, as opposed to merely making the law harder to satisfy.  So on its own terms, it seems to have worked wonders, at least on the surface.  But at what cost, really?  

Baby, meet bathwater, basically.

Try to implement such a draconian law over here in the USA today, especially the part about punishing servers and passengers, and the very best you could hope for in terms of unintended consequences in our culture would be a deep-freeze chilling effect on what is left of in-person socialization, and it goes downhill from there.  

In any case, such a law is WAY outside of the Overton window for an individualistic society (not to mention a car culture with vast rural areas!) like the USA, so the odds of this ever happening here are quite slim to none indeed.  It is truly un-American, to say the least.  But both less extreme (in terms of criminal penalties) AND more extreme (in terms of lower BAC limits) versions of this have of course been applied to Americans under the arbitrary age of 21 for decades now:  just think of zero tolerance laws and social host liability laws.  And internal possession laws, constructive possession laws, use and lose laws, keg registration, and other face-saving ancillary laws to prop up the failed experiment that is the 21 drinking age as well.

Oh, and even with this law in place for two decades, Japan STILL has stubbornly refused to lower the drinking age to 18.  Even after lowering the age of majority from 20 to 18 effective in 2022, they still kept the drinking age and smoking age at 20, because reasons.  And that whole thing about easily getting beer and sake in vending machines (!) for the past few decades or so?  Well, now the vending machines will need to see (and scan) some ID, at least most of them, apparently, according to Reddit.

That said, Japan is actually surprisingly lax in general by American standards about things like public drunkenness (as long as one is not being disorderly, of course), drinking in public, drinking on public transportation, and even drinking in a car (!) as long as the driver isn't drinking.  And alcohol is available almost everywhere, from convenience stores to supermarkets to vending machines and even in fast-food restaurants as well. That's largely because no liquor licenses are required for serve alcohol on-premise in Japan, and even though such licenses are required to sell alcohol for off-premise, they aren't exactly hard to get.

Twenty-One Debunked strongly opposes drunk driving, of course, but still does NOT support such an extreme approach to it like they have in Japan.  Rather, we support a graduated BAC limit of 0.05% for administrative-only penalties, 0.08% for criminal penalties, 0.15% for "aggravated DUI" criminal penalties, and a limit of 0.00% if driving recklessly, and grudgingly support 0.00-0.02% zero tolerance for young and novice drivers, ideally based on number of years of licensed driving rather than age alone.  Riding a bicycle under the influence should be a traffic violation, not a crime.  (Walking under the influence should not be illegal at all in itself, of course.)  And we believe in individual responsibility, thus the only people punished should be the drinking drivers themselves, not the passengers or servers, as that would be un-American.  Thus, we also believe that dram shop and social host liability laws should be repealed, or at least greatly watered down, as far as consenting adults are concerned.

Crack down HARD on actual drunk drivers, with sobriety checkpoints (provided that they follow the Constitution, of course) and especially roving and saturation patrols as well.  "Rovin' Eyes....are watching YOU!!!"

(Contrary to what some believe, something approximating de facto "random breath testing" actually IS possible in the USA, they just have to be more creative about it.)

Repeat or high-BAC offenders, and especially those driving recklessly as well, should lose their licenses immediately and permanently, and go directly to jail.  Do NOT pass GO.  Do NOT collect $200.  Do the crime, do the time.  

Even first offenders (who have likely been doing it hundreds of times before getting caught the first time) should still be punished harshly enough to be a very serious deterrent as well.  We also need to expand the use of ignition interlocks for ALL DUI offenders, as well as things like DUI Courts and South Dakota's highly successful 24/7 Program.

Kill or maim someone else as a result of driving under the influence?  Throw away the key!  NO MERCY!

And yes, the "skipper" taxi and rideshare services are an excellent idea that should be implemented everywhere, as well as also extending the hours of public transportation where it currently exists.  There is no reason to make the perfect the enemy of the good, after all.  And that will also help the hospitality industry survive as well.

To Japan's credit, they have proven that it is indeed possible to completely separate drinking from driving.  We certainly have to give them kudos for that, no doubt.

But criminalizing and jailing experienced and responsible adult drivers (let alone those around them too!) for having ONE glass of wine or beer with dinner?  That is simply a bridge too far for any free society that has even the slightest hint of a car culture.  That's not public safety, that's lunacy!

(And as Japan has shown, it's NOT like even that will be enough to appease the ageists into lowering the drinking age, as there is really NO appeasing anyone like that.  Meanwhile, far less strict countries, even with car cultures, still have no qualms about letting 18 year olds drink, as long as the don't drive under the influence of course.)

And of course, we strongly believe that the drinking age should be lowered to 18, period, and yesterday is NOT soon enough.  Let America be America again.  If you're old enough to go to war, you're old enough to go to the bar.  'Nuff said.

After all, at the end of the day, we're NOT Japan.  We never were, and we never will be either.

What Australia Gets Right (Updated)

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.  For all age groups.  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 in every state except Utah) and they have random breath testing (RBT), which has been effectively ruled unconstitutional in the USA, and even Canada only began doing it in 2018.  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 quasi-randomly pull people over for trivial reasons as a pretext and use that as an excuse to test drivers, and the initial effectiveness of RBT in Australia seems to decay over time to converge to the still-significant level of effectiveness demonstrated by American-style sobriety checkpoints (in 38 states) and/or roving/saturation patrols (in all states).   So America can indeed do what Australia does, we just need to be more creative about it.  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 truly 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!

(They also have zero tolerance BAC laws as well, albeit for the first three years of licensed driving regardless of age.)

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.

UPDATE:  We should clarify that we do NOT support Australia's zero tolerance per se policy for driving with cannabis.  Since THC is fat-soluble, the pharmacokinetics of cannabis are far too complex, and thus do NOT lend themselves to any sort of per se limits, let alone zero tolerance.  If there must be any official limit, is should be "permissible inference" or "prima facie" instead, and of course significantly greater than zero.  After all, merely testing positive at a too-low cutoff days or longer after last use should NOT be seen as evidence of current impairment.

The Pitfalls Of "Ersatz 21"

We at Twenty-One Debunked have always supported fully lowering the drinking age to 18, across the board, full stop.  Such advocacy has been primarily on deontological or rights-based rather than utilitarian grounds, though there is clearly some of the latter as well.  And while we have grudgingly advocated some short-term compromises in our proposal and in several posts for the sake of moving the Overton window in our favor just to get the lower drinking age passed at all, we have done so with the very greatest reluctance.  Because if we are not careful, such compromises can actually work against us, and thus become an "own goal" in both senses of the term.  Especially if we start actually believing too hard in such "safeguards".

We recently came up with a name for this phenomenon:  "Ersatz 21".  Because at base, each and every one of the following compromises and concessions to the other side (some we support for the short term, some we don't) can be considered as a way to appease the other side and retain at least some of the alleged (and that is the appropriate word!) public health and safety "benefits" of the 21 drinking age, as at least a partial substitute for it.  For example:

• Keeping the Zero Tolerance DUI Law age limit at 21, and/or for the first X number of years of having a license.  (Puerto Rico, many Canadian provinces, Germany, and many other countries currently do so despite a drinking age of 18 or even lower.)
• Strictly enforcing the new, lowered drinking age of 18, especially against vendors and those who otherwise furnish alcohol to people under 18.
• Keeping the purchase age at 19, 20, or 21 for kegs, cases, handles of liquor, and other large quantities, and/or limiting the quantities and number of transactions per day for people aged 18-20.
• Having shorter trading hours for people under 21.
• Lowering the drinking or purchase age to 18 for beer and/or wine, but keeping it 20 or 21 for hard liquor.
• Lowering the general drinking age to 18, and the and purchase age to 18 for on-premise sales (bars and restaurants), but keeping the purchase age at 21 (or 20 or 19 perhaps) for off-premise sales from stores.  Or allowing off-premise sales to 18 year olds only if one is with someone over the higher age.
• Lowering the general drinking or purchase age to 19 or 20, but waiting longer to lower it all the way to 18.
• Having exceptions to the any of the higher drinking or purchase ages for those with a college or military ID.
• For on-premise sales, not accepting out of state IDs from people under a neighboring state's drinking age if within X number of miles from the border.
• Requiring a "drinking license" for 18-20 year olds similar to that advocated by Choose Responsibility.

All but the very last item on this list we would support to one degree or another for the short term to get the drinking age lowered, with as few such items as possible to get it passed, and a sunset clause for most of them.  We do NOT support Choose Responsibility's proposal, as it is way too quixotic and milquetoast, and as we have seen, utterly failed to win over the other side.  And of course, anything stricter than this list we will vehemently oppose, as that would defeat the purpose of lowering the drinking age to 18.

(Note that we absolutely DO fully support general things like raising the alcohol taxes, cracking down harder on drunk driving, and having tougher DUI laws in general, but those are not on the above list of "Ersatz 21" policies, as none of those things are age-specific.  Those things will of course take some of the wind out of the sails of the pro-21 side.)

And certainly, we should NEVER start out with a compromised position!  Validating the other side in ANY way, as we have seen, only works against us.

What Should The BAC Limit Be?

It is long past time to revisit the issue of BAC limits for driving once again, specifically for small amounts of alcohol, as it is already obvious for larger amounts.

Twenty-One Debunked believes that, in a perfect world, no one would ever dare to get behind the wheel after having even the slightest amount of alcohol in their system, period.  We would also have safe self-driving cars and state-of-the art public transportation, streets would be designed to maximize safety for all users rather than the convenience of only some users, and so on.  But unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world.  And we never will either.  Think protopian, not utopian.

Thus, we need to be realistic in terms of what sort of BAC limits and penalties we set. Note that the swiftness and certainty of punishment is far more effective than severity.  And we need to prioritize getting actual drunk drivers off the road above all.  Focus on the sharks, not the guppies or dolphins. 

Borrowing from Denmark, one of the heaviest drinking cultures in the world and not even remotely a temperance society, we currently believe that the per se legal limit should be 0.05% in general, and 0.00% if observed to be driving recklessly.

Borrowing from most of Canada, we believe that only a BAC above 0.08% should carry  criminal charges, and 0.05% to 0.08% should be only a traffic violation with a brief administrative license suspension and brief vehicle impoundment and a modest fine.  For novice drivers of any age with less than two consecutive, accident and violation-free years of licensed driving, or under 21, whichever is longer, the BAC limit should be either 0.00% or 0.02%, also a traffic violation less than or equal to that above 0.05%.

If the limit is officially set to 0.00% for effect, any test result below the limit of quantitative (LOQ) must be treated as a presumptive zero (by that, I mean a conclusive presumption).  If it is a handheld breathalyzer device, or if the LOQ is unknown for the instrument, any result below 0.02% shall be a presumptive zero.  And all failing breathalyzer results should be confirmed on a second device.

Penalties should be graduated.  For those with above 0.08% but below 0.15%, a first offense should be a misdemeanor, in addition to any administrative license revocation.  There can also be an option to proceed only administratively and thus summarily.  Repeat offenses above 0.08%, or any offenses above 0.15% (or "aggravated DUI"), and/or with any kids under 16 in the car and/or when a serious accident occurs, should be automatic felonies with stiff sentences and heavy fines that can only be downgraded upon successful completion of an alcohol treatment program, that is, the classic "felony hammer".  And license revocations after the second offense above 0.08% need to be (more or less) permanent.  No more people still driving after their second, third, fourth, or fifth (!) DUI, ever again.

And those who drunkenly kill or maim innocent people, well, they need to go away for a very, very long time.  No excuses.  Do the crime, do the time.

And enforcement of these BAC limits should be done not only with checkpoints, but also with roving patrols as well, including the back roads especially.  And also use the "fish in a barrel method" in the parking lots of bars and clubs too.  We need to get these ticking time bombs off the road, yesterday.

So what are we waiting for?

UPDATE:  While the evidence on zero tolerance laws is mixed at best, we will concede there may also be some side benefits to these laws as well.  Whether those alleged benefits are actually worth it remains an open question.

Does Lowering BAC Limit To 0.05% Actually Save Lives?

We at Twenty-One Debunked have long supported lowering the legal BAC limit for DUI/DWI to 0.05%, with nuance and graduated penalties, based on what we thought was rock-solid research supporting such a move from the current 0.08% limit in most of the USA.  However, a pair of more recent British studies casts serious doubt on whether such a move will actually save any lives at all by itself.

The study, in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet of all places, looks at a sort of natural experiment where Scotland lowered their BAC limit from 0.08% to 0.05% in 2014, while England and Wales kept it at 0.08% throughout.  The results?  Scotland saw no significant absolute difference in weekly traffic crashes after the change compared with before, and even saw a statistically significant 7% increase in crashes relative to England and Wales.  Similar results were found when looking only at serious, fatal, or single-vehicle nighttime crashes, hence the results were robust as well.  And all of this was after adjustment for several possible confounders.  The study also found that, contrary to what some might predict, no overall change in per capita alcohol consumption in Scotland either, and only a 0.7% decrease in on-premise alcohol consumption.  Can you say, "Whoops!"?

(And no, the study was NOT funded by the alcohol industry or any of its front groups.  Sorry.)

Thus, it seems that while lowering the BAC limit from 0.15% to 0.10% and then to 0.08% long ago probably did save a significant number of lives (though the exact number is debatable), further lowering it from 0.08% to 0.05% has very diminishing returns at best.  And it can perhaps even backfire at worst. The Australian success story was far more likely due to very tough enforcement of DUI laws in general (including, but not limited to, their legendary random breath testing (RBT) program), while the Continental European success story was likely due to the same, plus world-class public transportation as well.

So why are the above results so lackluster then?  Well, as Darren Grant noted in his famous study debunking the effectiveness of zero tolerance BAC laws for people under 21, it should really come as no surprise to an economist, who is used to thinking on the margin.  While driving impairment indeed begins long before reaching 0.08% or even 0.05%, it rises exponentially with each drink.  Thus, higher BACs are exponentially more dangerous than lower ones.  And the decision to have one's next drink based on trying to stay within the legal limit, even if a lower limit had the same deterrent effect at that limit, would have exponentially less effect that the decision not to cross a higher threshold.  (If anything, it's even MORE exponential for younger drivers, not less.)  And apparently once when the limit goes down to 0.05% or lower, any additional lifesaving effect over and above lowering the limit to 0.08% simply gets lost in the statistical noise.  That is especially true if the penalty is the same for crossing a lower threshold, since there is literally no marginal deterrence effect against each additional drink beyond that threshold.

(Grant also did a sort of sequel to that study in 2016, again drawing similar conclusions.)

We already know that the vast, vast majority of DUI casualties are concentrated among extremely high BAC drivers, usually 0.15%+ (average 0.16%) and often ones who do so repeatedly and frequently.  These drunk drivers are sometimes called "hardcore" drunk drivers, and are the most resistant to changing their behavior.  And most of those are in fact alcoholics to one degree or another.  They would, of course, laugh at the idea of a BAC limit being lowered to 0.05%, or at the very least, wouldn't exactly agonize over it.  This is all common knowledge, and not at all controversial, except of course among MADD and similar zealots.

Thus, if we as a society decide to set the BAC limit at 0.05%, or indeed any number below 0.08%, there should be steeply graduated penalties, with 0.05% (or 0.02% for young or novice drivers) being a mere traffic violation with a modest fine and short-term license suspension, and no criminal record, 0.08-0.10% being a misdemeanor with a steeper fine and longer license suspension or revocation, 0.10-0.15% being misdemeanor with an even steeper fine and even longer license revocation and mandatory jail time, and 0.15%+ being a felony with permanent or semi-permanent license revocation, very steep fines, vehicle forfeiture, and a stiff prison sentence.  Repeat offenses of 0.08% or higher would carry the same penalties as a 0.15%+ BAC, as would driving above 0.08% with a child under 16 in the vehicle.

We also know that swiftness and certainty of punishment, or the perception of such, is a far greater deterrent than severity.  Thus, automatic administrative penalties, separate from any criminal penalties, are found to be more effective that any criminal laws on the books, most notably in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta.

Of course, we would be remiss if we did not discuss the stunning success of special DUI/DWI courts.  These are diversion programs that allow DUI offenders to plead guilty and complete coerced treatment and enforced abstinence from alcohol instead of jail or other penalties.  And they work quite well, with far lower recidivism rates than for those who do not enter such programs.  There are two types of DUI offenders these days:  1) relative normies who simply make dumb decisions and can be "scared straight", and 2) hardcore drunk drivers.  And DUI courts actually get to the root of the problem for the latter.

But first, we need to get these ticking time bombs off of the roads before they kill or maim innocent people.  Australian-style RBT is one blunt way to do it, but that would not likely pass constitutional muster in the USA. And even then, the long-run effects of Australia's RBT were not very different than those of American-style sobriety checkpoints when studied in the 1980s.  Tougher and sustained enforcement in general really seems to be the key.  And that can of course be done more effectively and cost-effectively with roving and saturation patrols, that look for signs of actually impaired drivers on the roads.  Especially in the many states that do not allow sobriety checkpoints to take place, they HAVE to rely on DUI patrols instead.

(Twenty-One Debunked recently came up with an ingenious idea to turn roving and saturation police patrols against DUI into a COPS-like reality TV show called "Operation Rovin' Eyes", complete with ride-alongs for community members as well.)

Seasoned drunk drivers know how to avoid the checkpoints with ease.  But with roving and saturation patrols, they will soon learn (either the easy way, or the hard way) that you can run, but you can't hide.  "Roving eyes...are watching YOU!" would be a good slogan to publicize the program.  The "fish in a barrel" method, that is, parking a police car outside bars, clubs, or parties and catching would-be drunk drivers before they get on the road, would also be a great complement to such patrols as well.

And while we're at it, let's get all of the garden-variety reckless, negligent, and distracted drivers off the road as well.  The same patrols will of course get them too.

It's time to stop tilting at proverbial windmills, and finish the job for good.  So what are we waiting for?

P.S.  The drinking age in the UK is 18, in case you didn't already know.  Kinda like most of the world.

UPDATE:  What about weed?  Unlike with alcohol, Twenty-One Debunked does not support any per se limits for cannabis, only rational prima facie ones that are rebuttable, similar to what Colorado has.  The complex pharmacokinetics and lack of correlation between blood THC levels and actual impairment renders any per se legal threshold to be inherently unscientific, and there is still zero evidence that such per se laws save any lives or improve public safety at all.  While cannabis can indeed impair driving, and a fortiori when combined with alcohol, it is best to focus on those drivers that are actually impaired, rather than to snare perfectly sober drivers in the dragnet due to mere trace amounts of THC in one's system.

UPDATE 2:  While the evidence on zero tolerance laws is mixed at best, we will concede there may also be some side benefits to these laws as well.  Whether those alleged benefits are actually worth it remains an open question.

What Should the BAC Limit Be?

Recently there has been a push to lower the BAC limit for DUI to 0.05 from its current 0.08.  The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) estimates that it would save 1000 lives per year.  This idea is not without controversy, and Twenty-One Debunked is clearly no stranger to controversy.  So is it a wise idea?

First, let's examine the evidence.  It is clear that most drivers are significantly impaired at a BAC of 0.05-0.08, with at least a fourfold increase in fatal crash risk compared to zero BAC, even though this impairment can be rather subtle.  For young male drivers, this relative risk increases to tenfold.  Most civilized countries (and the state of New York) recognize this fact and have thus set their BAC limits at 0.05, and some have set it even lower still.  And doing so has been shown to save lives, even in car-cultures like Australia who saw more progress in reducing alcohol-related traffic deaths than the USA or Canada.  To reach a BAC of 0.05, it would take about three drinks for a 180-pound man or about two drinks for a 120-pound woman within an hour or two.  So contrary to popular opinion, a 0.05 limit would NOT criminalize having a drink with dinner at a restaurant and subsequently driving home.  Thus, on balance, the benefits of lowering the limit outweigh the costs, and it is most likely a good idea overall.

That being said, Twenty-One Debunked does NOT support making it a criminal offense to drive with a BAC of 0.05-0.08.  Rather, we favor the approach taken by the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta, as well as some Australian states.  In these jurisdictions, driving with a BAC of 0.05-0.08 is illegal but is only a traffic infraction, with administrative rather than criminal penalties.  Only above 0.08 would a driver face criminal penalties.  Administrative penalties include immediate short-term license suspension, short-term vehicle impoundment, and fairly modest fines for those who fail or refuse a breathalyzer.  Our proposal already includes these ideas, along with tougher enforcement and graduated penalties based on BAC and number of offenses.  We believe that if all or even some of the ideas in our proposal were implemented, alcohol-related traffic deaths and other problems would decrease dramatically in a fairly short time.

Finally, we should note that MADD founder (and later turncoat) Candy Lightner is against lowering the BAC limit to 0.05, about as strongly as she supports keeping the drinking age 21.  Remember that in 2008 she even insulted our men and women in uniform on national TV just to make a point about why the drinking age should be 21 in her view.  That is truly the height of hubris and hypocrisy, and you don't get much more pharisaical than that.   And ironically even MADD itself, who Lightner has apparently made peace with, isn't too keen on the 0.05 limit either. 

MADD and their ilk have historically claimed that if a particular policy saves even one life, it's worth it.  Funny how they would oppose (or at least not push for) a policy that would likely save at least as many lives as their own (bogus) estimate of lives saved by the 21 drinking age.  That really speaks volumes about what they really are--an anti-youth hate group that really has no place in a civilized society but on the trash heap of history.

Do Zero Tolerance Laws Really Work?

This is a question to which most researchers would answer "yes," due to numerous empirical studies as well as in theory, but many have had their doubts. Enter Darren Grant, an economist at Sam Houston State University, who did a recent study that shows that there are good reasons to doubt the effectiveness of such laws.

Zero Tolerance (ZT) laws are what they sound like: laws that prohibit people (under 21 in this case) from driving with any measurable amout of alcohol in one's blood. These laws were justified by studies that found that the relative risk of a fatal crash for 16-20 year old drivers begins rising at a lower BAC, and more rapidly, than for those over 21.  By 1998, all 50 states and DC have passed such laws. Many states did so voluntarily, but the rest were forced by Congress to do so or lose highway funding (sound familiar?) and capitulated. ZT laws had to set the BAC limit for drivers under 21 at 0.02 or less in order to pass muster for Congress.  And until now, virtually every study has supported their effectiveness.

Grant's study found that ZT laws had essentially no effect on traffic fatality rates or the BAC distribution of fatalites. Data was from 1988-2000, during which time all states had a 21 drinking age. Several control variables and fixed effects were accounted for. Whether a state had a "partial" ZT law (a lower BAC limit for youth that was either >0.02 or had an age limit below 21) before adopting a "full" ZT law (satisfying the federal mandate), which several did, was also accounted for. Similar effects were observed on daytime and nighttime fatalities, despite the fact that most alcohol-related fatalities are concentrated at night. In addition, effects were compared to drivers over 21, who should not be affected by the ZT laws, but such effects were in fact similar, which suggests a spurious relationship due to unknown coincident factors. Finally, the fractions of total fatalities that were zero BAC, low BAC, and high BAC drivers were equivalent before and after a ZT law was passed, further casting doubt on its effectiveness.

What are we to make of all this? Previous studies were either pre/post studies that omitted key variables, or longitudinal studies that were otherwise less thorough than this one. This study appears to trump the rest, and it is thus very tempting to say that zero tolerance = zero intelligence.

That being said, we at 21 Debunked still recommend that if the drinking age is lowered to 18, which we strongly advocate for all 50 states, that the ZT laws generally remain as is, with an age limit of 21. Better yet, ZT laws ought to be strengthened by making the BAC limit 0.02 for the first x number of years of licensed driving for all ages, or age 21, whatever is longer. Several countries with lower drinking ages (Canada, Germany, Netherlands, etc.) interestingly set ZT age limits higher than the legal drinking age and/or base it on the number of years of licensed driving one has, with the latter making even more sense.  Puerto Rico, with a drinking age of 18, also recently adopted a 0.02 limit for those under 21. And there are good reasons for America maintaining some type of "full" ZT law even after the drinking age is lowered.

• ZT laws send a strong message that alcohol and driving don't mix, and removing them may be seen by some as implying otherwise.
• Inexperience in drinking as well as driving, regardless of age, can be a deadly combination.
• If the drinking age was 18, one would have three years of legal drinking experience and up to five years of driving experience at 21.
• ZT laws would be a good precautionary measure against the alleged adverse effects of lowering the drinking age, and would help assuage fears about such effects.
• Federal law requires ZT laws as a condition of highway funding. It's bad enough to have to deal with that kind of coercion with the drinking age, let alone additional funding losses.
• Some studies find positive externalities from ZT laws, such as reduced suicide rates, which may or may not be causally related. 
• ZT laws have strong public support, and frankly, it would be politically impossible to lower the drinking age without maintaining such laws.

However, we recommend that laws that set the BAC limit to 0.00 be changed to 0.02 to prevent false positives, and violating a ZT law (but not violating the adult BAC limit) should not be a criminal offense. For those who violate adult BAC limits, there should be graduated penalties that are proportional to BAC, eliminating the current perverse incentives resulting from reduced marginal penalties for each additional drink above the 0.08 threshold. And those penalties should be tougher than the current ones as well. In addition, we also recommend lowering the adult BAC limit of 0.08 down to 0.05, like it is in many other countries, since impairment begins well before 0.08. In addition, preliminary breath testers (i.e. handheld ones) should be not be sufficient evidence; that's what evidential breath testers are for.

But most importantly, we should never lose sight of the fact that the average BAC in an alcohol-related fatality is 0.16 in general and 0.14 for drivers under 21. Moreover, only 5.8% and 5.4% of total fatalities, for all ages and ages 16-20, respectively, involve a BAC below 0.08--and most of such deaths would probably still have occurred in the absence of booze.  And drivers age 21-24 are the most overrepresented in alcohol-related fatal crashes (at all BACs) as well.  Thus, the highest priority in the fight against impaired driving should be catching and deterring those very high BAC drivers of all ages (who are responsible for the lion's share of such deaths), rather than strategize on how best to catch young drivers with BACs below 0.05 (who are responsible for only a small fraction). In other words, we need to see the forest for the trees.