Are Americans Really Inferior To Europeans?

One common objection to lowering the drinking age to 18 in the USA is that "Europeans can handle a lower drinking age, but Americans can't".  People say this all the time without realizing the irony of it all.  They are literally implying that Americans are inferior to Europeans (and Canadians, etc.), while these are usually the same people who love to shout that America is the "greatest country in the world", often in the same breath with a straight face.

Silly, right?  And when asked to elaborate, they will likely say that Americans don't know the meaning of moderation and are lacking in self-discipline, often citing our legendary high obesity rate as "proof".  But by that logic, we should bring back Prohibition for all ages, right?  After all, there is nothing magical about 21.  But we saw what a failure that was.  And by the same token, the 21 drinking age is the greatest alcohol policy failure since Prohibition, and neither one led to moderation, in fact quite the opposite.  Most adults, including 18-20 year olds, will drink regardless.  Turning alcohol into a "forbidden fruit" makes it all the more enticing, and forcing it underground makes it far more dangerous than it has to be.  And infantilizing young adults will only lead them to be...less mature about it.  Who woulda thunk it?

And then of course is the "life is cheap over there" argument, which also does not hold water.  If life is so much cheaper in Europe, Canada, etc, why do they have universal healthcare, stronger social safety nets, generally better educational systems, higher life expectancies, and lower poverty rates than the USA?  That's because life is really NOT cheaper over there after all.  Again, who woulda thunk it?

And then there is the old chestnut that "we don't have the public transport infrastructure to handle young adult drinking like they do".  It is technically true that the USA is a car culture and our public transportation is inferior to most of Europe's, but the same is true for Canada, and they set their drinking age at 18 or 19 depending on the province.  Ditto for Australia and New Zealand, who both set it at 18, and there are still some parts of Europe, particularly areas of the UK, where you need a car to get around for the most part.  Besides, if our public transportation infrastructure cannot handle 18-20 year olds, they would be even less able to handle the much larger 21+ age group as well, and once again, all roads either lead to either Prohibiton for all or legal drinking for all adults, period.  If you give the ageists enough rope...

How about the idea that Americans are too ethnically and racially diverse to handle drinking at 18?  Not only is that, well, racist, but even if that dubious claim were true, it would also be an argument for Prohibition or greater authoritarianism in general.  Same goes for other specious arguments about Americans having less "social capital" and being too hyper-individualistic compared to other countries, as well as arguments about "affluenza" and "spoiled children", and also arguments about "family breakdown" and a "nation of semi-orphans".

Note that the typical "kids today" arguments often contradict one another.  And even if one were to concede that "kids today" are more infantilized compared to both previous generations as well as the rest of the world, which is debatable though it seems to have some merit, the solution is NOT to infantilize young adults even further still!  The road to serfdom is indeed paved with the ostensibly "good intentions" of "protecting" young people (from themselves), which is gradually expanded to include older and older age groups with every passing generation it seems.  And what better time than now for a U-turn?

And lest anyone trot out the "21 saves lives" argument, keep in mind that that has also been debunked as well by numerous studies, and most thoroughly and eloquently so by Miron and Tetelbaum (2009).  Even if it were true, surely the old joke about having a speed limit of 21 and a drinking age of 55 would save even more lives, and yet no sane person would propose such a thing.  Gee, I wonder why?  Funny how "if it saves one life, it's worth it" and "think of the children" seems to only apply when it's convenient for the dominant age group in society.

Let America be America again, and lower the drinking age to 18.  If you're old enough to go to war, you're old enough to go to the bar.  'Nuff said.

QED

Teen Drinking Plummets Worldwide, Regardless of the Drinking Age

That is the biggest takeaway from the latest World Health Organization (WHO) study.   Since 2002, teen drinking has indeed plummeted worldwide, including the USA.  And lest the pro-21 crowd try to take any credit for this trend, keep in mind that this secular trend also occurred in other countries with drinking ages of 18 or even lower still.  The UK, for example, despite their legendary binge drinking culture and relatively loosely enforced (albeit more so than in the past) drinking age of 18, saw their rate of weekly teen drinking among boys decline from 50.3% to 10% by 2014, a relative drop of over 80% and one of the largest declines of any nation.  And British teen girls also saw a drop almost as large as well.

Both among teens and adults alike, gender gaps on drinking are also clearly narrowing.  The difference is that among teens, the convergence is primarily due to drinking more rapidly decreasing among males (while still dropping for both primary genders), whereas among adults, it is primarily due to an increase in drinking among females in many countries.  Let that sink in for a moment.

And as Twenty-One Debunked has noted before, another such notable example of this is Germany, whose drinking age is still 16 for beer and wine, and 18 for distilled spirits.  In fact, one can even drink at 14 in public when accompanied by a parent or guardian, and there is no age limit for drinking in private residences.  Such laws have essentially been in effect for as long as anyone can remember (with perhaps the notable exception of the Nazi era), so what were the results of maintaining them in recent decades?  From 1979 to 2016, the percentage of 12-17 year old Germans who drink at least weekly dropped from 25.4% to 10.0%, a relative drop of more than 60%.  For 18-25 year olds, the percentage dropped by nearly half during the same timeframe, and from 1973-2016 dropped from from two out of three (67.1%) to less than one out of three (30.7%).  These trends are comparable to if not faster than the corresponding figures for American youth.

In other words, consider this the final nail in the coffin for the specious claim that the 21 drinking age had anything more than a minor impact on overall teen or young adult drinking.  Prost!

Israel's (and Europe's) Non-Ageist, Cool-Headed Response to Vaping

Unlike in the USA, it seems like cooler heads are prevailing in Israel and in the EU when it comes to vaping.  Rather than respond from a position of moral panic over teen use, which only fuels the deviancy amplification spiral, they instead took a much more measured public health response.  Israel recently banned JUUL due to its unusually high nicotine content, and almost immediately afterwards, JUUL began selling the same reduced-nicotine version there that they have already been selling in the UK and Europe to comply with EU regulations.  And interestingly, Israel doesn't even have an age limit for vaping.  (It varies in Europe, and is 18 in the UK.)

The kernel of truth to the concern about youth vaping in the USA has to do with the nicotine, which is hardly a benign substance.  It is a highly addictive drug as well as a known neurotoxin, especially for the early adolescent brain, and yet some teens apparently don't realize that vape juices and pods even contain nicotine at all.  And with JUUL's high nicotine content, by the time some young experimenters realize that it has nicotine, they may already be hooked.  That said, vaping is still safer than smoking, and it seems to be making a dent in reducing youth and adult smoking rates, which are currently at a record low, as well as increasing successful quit rates among adults.  That means that vaping is literally saving people's lives.

The best balancing act would probably be to stop panicking and to cap and reduce the maximum allowable nicotine levels for vape juices/pods to European and Israeli levels.  The FDA already has the authority to do this.  Alternatively, or in in addition, taxing vape juices/pods based on nicotine content would also be a good idea as well.

And stop panicking already!  Seriously, this moral panic is the best free advertising that JUUL and other vape companies could ever possibly dream of.

Oh, and by the way, there is zero evidence that raising the age limit to 21, as was done in several states and localities recently, has had any measurable impact on teen vaping OR smoking rates compared to states and localities that kept it at 18.  And since the apparent success of Needham, MA still has yet to be replicated anywhere, it would be most parsimonious to consider them an outlier, with factors other than raising the age limit being the real underlying causes of success.

The Other Drinking Age? Why We Oppose Any Age Limits for Energy Drinks

Given the endless hand-wringing moral panic about energy drinks and young people, it was only matter of time before an age limit for energy drinks would be proposed (in the USA and UK, for example) or in few cases even enacted (in Iceland, for example).  While it should go without saying that energy drinks aren't exactly health food, to put it mildly, and can indeed be abused, they are hardly the demon drink they are made out to be when used in moderation by adults and older teens.  And while prepubescent children should probably not be messing around with such concoctions, it does not follow that there should be an age limit at all, let alone one as high as 18.

We at Twenty-One Debunked believe that while a drinking age of 18 for alcohol would be rather progressive (compared to the current 21 in the USA, and 20 in Iceland), a drinking age of 18 for non-alcoholic energy drinks (compared to no age limit currently in the USA) would be utterly regressive, and thus we oppose any such attempts to enact one.  The alternatives we would support, though are not necessarily wedded to, include the following:

• Better public education about the very real hazards of excessive energy drink consumption at any age, and any special or increased risks that children and early teens (i.e. those under 15) may face.
• Tax energy drinks themselves, as well as tax sugary drinks in general and/or even tax the sugar itself at the source.
• Consider setting a reasonable limit on caffeine content, and banning any drinks over that limit (i.e. Red Bull would be fine, but Redline would be banned).  Ditto for any other ingredients that may be harmful and/or of questionable benefit.
• Restrict advertising and marketing that targets children and teens.
• Better labeling of caffeine content as well as any other ingredients, and better quality control of energy drinks as well.
• And last but not least, make the school day start later and ease up a bit on the homework, so children and teens don't feel the need to be quite so caffeinated (and sleep-deprived) all the time.

And thus, no need to have any new age limits enacted in an ageist society that already has far too many (and often far too high) age limits as it is.  Removing individual rights, from young people or in general, should NOT be the go-to solution to any real or imagined social problem.  Seriously, knock it off.