Would A Graduated Drinking Age Be Better? (Part Deux)

In our previous post, we discussed the idea of possibly having a split (graduated) drinking age for the first few years of lowering the drinking age, whether for quantity limits, beverage type, or both.  And we concluded that we would be open to that, but ONLY if that would eventually sunset to make it 18 across the board within a few years at most.  Remember, our goal at Twenty-One Debunked remains to fully lower it to 18, and not a day later.

Another idea could be to lower it completely to 18 for on-premise purchases (bars and restaurants), while requiring anyone 18-20 buying alcohol at stores for off-premise consumption to simply have someone 21 or older with them for the purchase, except if those 18-20 have and present a college or military ID.  And they could not have anyone under 18 with them (except their own children) either.  That would be more than enough to discourage 18-20 year olds from buying for their younger friends, which of course would still remain just as illegal as it is now.  

And of course, 18-20 year olds should be fully allowed to drink, possess, and be furnished alcohol in private as well, just like people over 21 currently are.  That would be head and shoulders better than ONLY allowing them to possess and consume alcohol on premise, a truly half-baked idea which would thus create a perverse incentive to drive under the influence, especially in rural areas where such a policy would be tantamount to legalized entrapment in practice.

What about the fear of "blood borders" between states that lower their drinking ages while adjacent states remain 21?  Well, first of all, that is really no worse than the problem of dry counties adjacent to wet counties in terms of perverse incentives to drive under the influence.  (And we sure as hell don't blame it on the wet counties!)  Secondly, they could always have it be where on premise establishments less than X number of miles from the state line of such adjacent states would not be allowed to accept out of state IDs for people under 21 from those specific states, except in college towns for those who also show a college ID.  And the same "temporary residence" exception should also apply to hotels serving their overnight guests as well.  There is a precedent for Wisconsin (a state that has experimented with just about every possible alcohol policy under the sun) doing something similar before 1977 when it was rescinded.

Another "novel" idea:  simply enforce existing laws against actual drunk driving better.  Checkpoints and/or roving patrols can really go a long way yo reduce the problem.

But should we even bother to start out with a compromised position at all?  That remains an open question.

The pro-21 crowd really lives in an alternate reality, it seems.  Just recently, I was debating someone on Reddit that kept on fruitlessly picking apart the methodology of Miron and Tetelbaum's groundbreaking 2009 study that thoroughly debunked the idea that the 21 drinking age saved lives.  The person I debated with kept on straining at proverbial gnats and swallowing proverbial camels, tossing red herrings, using the word "weird" repeatedly for anything they disagreed with, and kept failing to actually refute it.  The pro-21 crowd really cannot to see the forest for the trees, it seems.  They are apparently way too left-brained to do so (and perhaps smooth-brained as well).

The point being:  trying to reason with them is fundamentally an exercise in futility.  And compromising with them would also likely be just as futile as well.

Would A Graduated Drinking Age Be Better?

Twenty-One Debunked has long called for the drinking age to be lowered to 18, completely, and yesterday is not soon enough.  And that hasn't changed one iota since our founding in 2009, and it never will.  That's our North Star.

But what about a phase-in period to make the age lowering more likely to get passed at all?  We have already proposed for the first few years of the new law, to have it remain at 21 for kegs, cases, handles (large bottles) of liquor, and other bulk quantities, while otherwise lowering it to 18 yesterday, and having the higher age limit automatically sunset after X number of years (likely three to five years).  And also, keep the zero tolerance age at 21 for drinking and driving as well for the first few years.  The question remains, however:  what if that still is not enough to realistically get it passed?  We face an extremely uphill battle these days, after all.

Thus, we at Twenty-One Debunked would now grudgingly support, and ONLY for the first few years at most, also keeping the purchase age at 21 for the first few years for hard liquor, or really anything with more than 18% alcohol by volume.  Everything else in non-bulk quantities would be lowered to 18 right away, while the higher age limit would automatically sunset to 18 within a few years.  The higher age limit would not apply to drinking the liquor, of course, only for the specific act of buying it.

Alternatively, the higher age limit can be phased down gradually to 20, then 19, then 18 as well.

The higher age limit could also be kept for all internet, phone, or delivery app orders of alcohol for the first few years as well, and also perhaps have shorter trading hours allowed for off-premise sales for those below that age.

All of this would pour cold water over any real or imagined fears of a short-term increase alcohol-related problems and casualties among teens and young adults, particularly those involving high school students and keggers.  (Longer-term problems and casualties resulting from a lower drinking age have already been thoroughly debunked by Miron and Tetelbaum (2009) and several other studies, of course.)

Hey, if it actually gets us to our real goal sooner than being absolute purists about it would, why not?  Especially in light of the fact that there are more and more places (coffee shops, movie theaters, etc.) these days that serve beer, wine, cider, and/or alcopops, but not hard liquor.  That said, we will NOT support any further compromises beyond that, as that would be a compromise OF a compromise, and thus that would ultimately vitiate our goal of lowering to 18.

So what are we waiting for?

Latest Regression Discontinuity Study Only Confirms Powder Keg Theory (Again)

As we have noted before back in 2016, the latest type of drinking age studies, i.e. "regression discontinuity" (RD) studies, superficially appear to support the 21 drinking age, but upon closer examination actually kind of imply the opposite, namely 1) there is really nothing magical about 21, and 2) delaying legal access to alcohol to 21 compared with 18 only creates an even larger ticking time-bomb and powder keg that goes off at 21, with no real net benefit.

In 2016, pro-21 researchers Kitt Carpenter and Carlos Dobkin were at it once again.  As you may recall, we at Twenty-One Debunked have critiqued much of their previous work, particularly their use of the "regression discontinuity" approach.  The researchers found a significant jump in statistical death rates, arrests, and stuff like that immediately after young people turn 21 compared with before.  And their latest study seems to be more of the same, this time looking at non-fatal injuries as measured by both ER visits and inpatient hospital admissions.

Oddly, these researchers actually (and without even a hint of irony) claim that these studies show that the 21 drinking age is effective in saving lives and reducing alcohol-related harm!  But we at Twenty-One Debunked see it rather differently--if anything, it shows that there is nothing at all magical about turning 21 that makes one invulnerable to the deleterious effects of excessive alcohol consumption.  And setting the drinking age at such an arbitrarily high age only sets a powder keg (pun intended) that goes off when young people reach that age.  The higher the drinking age, the larger the powder keg, it seems.  And it also shows that the Law of Eristic Escalation (i.e. imposition of order leads to escalation of chaos) is correct, as well as Fenderson's Amendment (the tighter the order is maintained, the longer it takes for the chaos to escalate, but the more it does when it does).  Hardly a ringing endorsement for the 21 drinking age!

Of course, Carpenter and Dobkin also find evidence of a jump in both drinking and alcohol-related deaths among Canadians upon reaching their MLDA (18 or 19, depending on the province), particularly among males, and the increase in mortality seems to be due to a sudden jump in "extreme" binge drinking.  It seems there is always a risk of increased alcohol-related harm in the short-run after suddenly turning legal, regardless of age.  But as much other research shows, there is good reason to believe that such an effect is worse and longer-lasting when the the legal drinking age is higher rather than lower.  And furthermore, a recent study in Australia (where the drinking age is 18 and DUI laws are tougher) found essentially no link between being able to drink legally and motor vehicle accidents of any type in the state of New South Wales.  Food for thought indeed.

On the plus side, one should also note that another recent study using a regression-discontinuity approach found that being able to drink legally reduced the consumption and initiation of hard drugs (cocaine, heroin, meth, etc.) among young people, with no effect on tobacco use.  And still another RD study finds that when alcohol retreats, cannabis advances (and vice-versa).  These findings blow yet another big hole in the junk science that is the roundly-debunked "gateway" theory of drugs.

Fast forward to 2018, when another researcher, UW-Madison Professor Jason Fletcher, conducted yet another regression discontinuity study in the USA, this time looking at previously unexplored risk behaviors and consequences relating to drinking.  In addition to replicating the results of the aforementioned previous studies, these novel measures included self-reports of drunk driving, boozy and risky sex, interpersonal troubles, violence, and of course, hangovers.  And not surprisingly, these effects also jumped at 21 as well, with larger effects on males than females.  And again, this is simply further confirmation of the powder keg theory.

So what do we call it when you do the same thing over and over again and expect different results?

UPDATE: A later study in Austria, where the drinking age is 16, also dovetails with this same theory as well.

What Australia Gets Right

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.  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) and they have random breath testing (RBT), which is unconstitutional in both the USA and Canada.  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 pull people over for trivial reasons and use that as an excuse to test drivers, and the initial effectiveness of RBT in Australia seems to decay over time to the level of effectiveness demonstrated by American-style sobriety checkpoints and/or roving patrols.  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 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!

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.

Latest Regression Discontinuity Studies Only Confirm Powder Keg Theory

This year, pro-21 researchers Kitt Carpenter and Carlos Dobkin are at it again.  As you may recall, we at Twenty-One Debunked have critiqued much of their past work, particularly their use of the "regression discontinuity" approach.  The researchers found a significant jump in statistical death rates, arrests, and stuff like that immediately after young people turn 21 compared with before.  And their latest study seems to be more of the same, this time looking at non-fatal injuries as measured by both ER visits and inpatient hospital admissions.

Oddly, these researchers actually (and without even a hint of irony) claim that these studies show that the 21 drinking age is effective in saving lives and reducing alcohol-related harm!  But we at Twenty-One Debunked see it rather differently--if anything, it shows that there is nothing at all magical about turning 21 that makes one invulnerable to the deleterious effects of excessive alcohol consumption.  And setting the drinking age at such an arbitrarily high age only sets a powder keg (pun intended) that goes off when young people reach that age.  The higher the drinking age, the larger the powder keg, it seems.  And it also shows that the Law of Eristic Escalation (i.e. imposition of order leads to escalation of chaos) is correct, as well as Fenderson's Amendment (the tighter the order is maintained, the longer it takes for the chaos to escalate, but the more it does when it does).  Hardly a ringing endorsement for the 21 drinking age!

Of course, Carpenter and Dobkin also find evidence of a jump in both drinking and alcohol-related deaths among Canadians upon reaching their MLDA (18 or 19, depending on the province), particularly among males, and the increase in mortality seems to be due to a sudden jump in "extreme" binge drinking.  It seems there is always a risk of increased alcohol-related harm in the short-run after suddenly turning legal, regardless of age.  But as much other research shows, there is good reason to believe that such an effect is worse and longer-lasting when the the legal drinking age is higher rather than lower.  And furthermore, a recent study in Australia (where the drinking age is 18 and DUI laws are tougher) found essentially no link between being able to drink legally and motor vehicle accidents of any type in the state of New South Wales.  Food for thought indeed.

On the plus side, one should also note that another recent study using a regression-discontinuity approach found that being able to drink legally reduced the consumption and initiation of hard drugs (cocaine, heroin, meth, etc.) among young people.  That blows yet another hole in the junk science that is the "gateway" theory.