- 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.
Sunday, May 4, 2025
At The End Of The Day, We're Not Japan
Thursday, April 10, 2025
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!
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.
Friday, April 4, 2025
The Pitfalls Of "Ersatz 21"
- 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.
Saturday, June 29, 2024
What Should The BAC Limit Be?
Friday, August 26, 2022
Does Lowering BAC Limit To 0.05% Actually Save Lives?
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
What Should the BAC Limit Be?
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.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Zero Tolerance Laws in Canada
Ontario has, and will retain, a drinking age of 19. In Canada, the drinking age is 18 or 19 depending on the province. Thus in Ontario, one can drive at 16, drink at 19, but will not be allowed to mix the two until 22 or until one has had a license for at least two years, whichever is longer.
We at Twenty-One Debunked, who unequivocally abhor drunk driving but believe the drinking age should be 18 and not a day later, have mixed feelings about the new law. On the positive side, though it may or may not actually save lives, it does send a strong message that drinking and driving simply do not mix. It provides a reason (or even an excuse) for young drivers to refuse a drink from their buddies at a bar or party without looking or feeling awkward. It also helps to appease the fears among older adults about young people drinking and driving, and can help pre-empt more extreme measures, such as raising the drinking age. On the negative side, it still remains a form of age discrimination, regardless of how well-intentioned it is, and the unrealistically low BAC limit provides no safeguards against false positives. There is a significant margin of error of +/-0.01-0.02 in BAC readings, meaning that it is theoretically possible for someone who had nothing at all to drink can test positive and lose his or her license for up to a month.
Thus, we recommend keeping the law, but raising the BAC limit to 0.02, or at least automatically subtracting 0.01 or 0.02 from any breathalyzer reading if they still wish to retain the absolute zero limit. Also, we think all fairly novice drivers (less than 5 years of licensed driving experience) should be held to the same standard regardless of age, as is currently done in the Netherlands with a BAC of 0.02. In addition, we recommend that if there must be age limits, the drinking age should be lowered to 18, and the zero tolerance age should be 21. Finally, we must never lose sight of the fact that (in the USA) the average BAC in fatal crashes is 0.16 overall and 0.14 for drivers under 21. We need to see the forest for the trees, and focus enforcement where it matters most. For those with high BACs, regardless of age, judges need to throw the book at them before they ever kill someone.