Or, "It's the Final Countdown!"
The 21 drinking age is an ageist and illiberal abomination that has NO place in a free society. Its very existence to this day is evidence that we are living in the wrong timeline. And the sooner it is jettisoned to the trash heap of history, the better.
Twenty-One Debunked has, unwaveringly and uncompromisingly, since our founding in 2009, sought to speedily lower the legal drinking age (in every sense) to 18, and not a day later. Period. That is, the same rights that people over 21 currently enjoy, should be democratized to include 18-20 year olds as well, and yesterday is NOT soon enough! That is our North Star for the near term, basically. (And for the very long term? Don't ask!) The relative purgatory and limbo of setting it at 19, 20, or a split/graduated age limit first has always been best considered a journey, NOT a destination.
That said, doing so is a LOT easier said than done politically. The Overton Window is clearly NOT in our favor, to put it mildly (that brief moment in the late 2000s notwithstanding, whose ship has long since sailed). And while the objections to lowering it to 18 are essentially specious and spurious, they are not entirely pulled out of the ether, either. So much "referred pain", as it were, is also present as well. Not least of which is the
Law of Eristic Escalation (i.e. Imposition of Order = Escalation of Chaos), which as a corollary, causes a "chaos deficit" to compound over time. This sets a massive "powder keg" that is best defused carefully and gingerly, to avoid too much chaos unleashed all at once in the short term, and the reactionary backlash that would follow. Plus, the fear of it would make it harder to get any bill that would lower the drinking age to have a prayer of passing.
So here is a potential "menu of options" to defuse the powder keg and its associated fears, and make the age-lowering bill easier to pass, and all of which should have a sunset clause built in so as not to defeat the purpose:
- Keeping the Zero Tolerance driving BAC age limit at 21 for the time being, or better yet, expanding it to include the first two or three years of having a driver's license, or 21, whichever is longer, largely similar to some other countries with lower drinking ages. And keep that in place for the first couple of years at least. (To defuse the fear of DUI.)
- Keeping the purchase age limit for kegs, cases, and other large quantities of alcohol at 21 for the time being, reasonable limits on quantities purchased per transaction, and no more than one transaction per person per store per day for people under 21. And keep that in place for the first year or couple of years. (To defuse the fear of high school keggers, as well as high school drinking more generally.)
- Phasing down the drinking age, or at least the purchase age (especially on-premise at bars and restaurants), by one month each day. That is, 20 years 11 months, 20 years 10 months....until it is 18 years and 0 months. And that phasedown will take all of....36 days to complete. (Hat tip to a guy on Facebook many years ago who came up with that idea, which we call "The Final Countdown", like the famous song by Europe.) (To defuse the fear of overall chaos in general, especially at bars and surrounding areas.)
- Best done through explicitly allowing "local option" to do so, and ideally kept only for a limited time, perhaps we could also set only the off-premise purchase age (but NOT drinking age, furnishing age, or on premise purchase age!) to 19 without conditions, and 18 only with a college or military ID, or proof of high school diploma or GED. (To further defuse any remaining fear of high school drinking and straw purchasing for younger friends.)
- "25 Mile Rule": To alleviate fears of "blood borders", for on-premise service in any bar or restaurant within 25 miles from the border of a neighboring state with a higher drinking age, no out-of-state IDs will be accepted for anyone from that state for anyone under that age, except 1) students within a college town (or a 5 mile radius from campus) showing valid college ID, 2) overnight guests being served in a hotel where they are staying.
- Perhaps temporarily (for the first few months or first year or so) keep the off-premise purchase age at 21 (or 20) for hard liquor, or any beverages exceeding 15% or 20% ABV, similar to what Finland (off-premise) and Norway (both on and off-premise) currently do. (To further defuse fears.)
- (Holds nose while grudgingly saying this) Continue allowing bars and clubs to set their own age limits higher than the legal drinking age, which many already do. (To defuse the (mostly apocryphal) fear of young people engaging in rowdiness, chaos, "pregaming", and arriving already at least half-drunk and not buying much at the bar.)
- And be sure to include a severability clause!
Indeed, while we are NOT wedded to any of these, and would rather NOT start out with any compromised position lest we have to compromise further, we endorse and strongly encourage at least the first three items on the list in the short term. And of course, it should go without saying that it should be accompanied by a renewed crackdown on drunk driving, drunk violence, drunk vandalism, and drunk and disorderly conduct, for ALL ages. For DUI specifically, combining sobriety checkpoints (subject to constitutionally-correct protocols), roving and saturation patrols, and especially "fish in a barrel" aka "Jack in the box" (police waiting patiently outside of bars for would-be drunk drivers to stumble to their cars, and gotcha!) would essentially make obsolete any concerns of increasing drunk driving, even if the drinking age was lowered to 18 overnight in one fell swoop.
Simple. Elegant. Surgical.
So what are we waiting for? "It's the Final Countdown!"
