New Review of the 21 Drinking Age

Economist Darren Grant (Sam Houston State University) has recently published online a study on the history, merits, and effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the 21 drinking age.  This study is one of a four-part series on drunk driving and related legislation.  Though he is not a member of Twenty-One Debunked, he nonetheless appears to echo much of what we have been saying all along.  Specifically, it exposes several biases in both the policy-making process and the studies used to support the 1984 federal drinking age law.

If his name sounds familiar, it is probably because we already discussed an older study of his on a previous post.  That study critically analyzed the effects of zero-tolerance drink-driving laws.  He also has a working paper that looks at both MLDA and drunk-driving laws in general, in which he found that hard-to-measure "social forces" were generally far more important than any of these laws, and that fact tends to skew the estimated effects of these laws.

One notable aspect of his current study concerns what we like to call "The Incredible Shrinking Effect Size" of the 21 drinking age.  For the studies that were presented at the federal hearings around 1984, and got the most attention, effect sizes of 30% or even higher (in terms of 18-20 year old traffic fatality reductions) were often reported.  However, several other studies found much smaller ones, especially the more recent regression-based ones.  Is it 30%?  Or maybe it's 20%.  Or maybe it's 13%.  Or maybe 11%.  Or maybe 7%.  Or maybe 5%.  Or maybe it's really zero, or even a net increase in deaths.  And yes, there are studies that found the latter.  But politics prevailed over science nonetheless.

One should also realize that NHTSA's estimate on the lives currently saved by the 21 drinking age (25,000 total, or 900 per year) is based on an unpublished in-house study from 1985 using only 13 states.  That study found a reduction of 13%, and NHTSA simply extrapolated that figure to the number of 16-20 year old fatalities in later years.  This number is thus junk, especially since studies like Miron and Tetelbaum (2009) found that the apparent effect wore off after the first year or two, was only found in the early-adopting states, and was offset by increases in fatalities among drivers under 18.  Other studies, like Asch and Levy (1987 and 1990), Males (1986), and Dee and Evans (2001) find that any lives of 18-20 year olds that appear to be "saved" are merely delayed a few years to the 21-24 age group.  Thus there is no net benefit in the long run to keeping the drinking age at 21.

It's time to put science ahead of ideology for once.  What better time than now?

Alaska Considers Lowering Drinking Age for Troops

Alaska, the last frontier, is considering lowering the drinking age to 18--but only for members of the U.S. Military.  While we at Twenty-One Debunked would like to see it lowered to 18 across the board, this would be a great first step in the right direction.  And it deserves a 21-gun salute.

It would also be the first time the 10% federal highway funding penalty would be tested since Louisiana did so in 1996.  While we don't know how Alaska would respond to that, one should remember that, despite their tiny population, they have lots of oil that the lower 48 and Hawaii are dependent on.  Thus, it would probably be foolish for the feds to enforce the FUDAA against such a state and risk retaliation.  Also, the so-called "blood-borders" argument (one of the reasons the FUDAA was enacted) would not really apply due to Alaska's isolation from the rest of the nation.  Not like it was a particularly good argument to begin with, since studies of the purported effect have been inconsistent, and the still-tolerated "blood-borders" of dry/wet counties are far worse since they directly involve a much larger share of the driving population.  Besides, a uniform drinking age of 18 would also eliminate "blood-borders" just the same, and even if varying state drinking ages are tolerated the feds would still have the power to make drunk driving across state lines a federal offense punishable by many years in federal prison.  Thus the "blood-borders" argument is a canard.

Remember, Alaska was one of the first states to lower the drinking age in 1970, even before the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age in 1971.  We wish lots of luck to the Land of the Midnight Sun.

Our Views on the BEER Act

A recent bipartisan bill in Congress known as the BEER Act has making headlines lately.  What it would do is significantly reduce the federal beer excise tax for small domestic brewers (less than 2 million barrels per year) and leave the normal rate untouched, essentially making the beer tax more progressive than it currently is.  While the small brewers currently get a somewhat reduced rate on the first 60,000 barrels, the bill would further reduce this rate as well as the rate on barrels up to 2 million, and only on those brewers who produce a total of 6 million barrels or less.  And this seems to be one of the few things that our increasingly divided Congress can agree upon.

Although we at Twenty-One Debunked have repeatedly called for significantly higher alcohol taxes (beer, wine, and distilled spirits) at both federal and state levels as part of our comprehensive plan to lower the drinking age to 18, we support the BEER Act since it is specific to small brewers (microbrewers).  We would never support a significant tax hike on microbrewers for three reasons:  1) they are far less able to absorb such a tax hike than larger brewers, 2) it would bring in very little revenue in practice relative to tax hikes on larger brewers, and 3) their products are already expensive enough, and are thus far less likely to be abused than their cheaper major brewer counterparts.  These small brewers contribute not just higher product quality, but numerous jobs for Americans that pay a decent wage.  So lets give them a shot in the arm, not a kick in the teeth.

Further Proof of White Noise Syndrome

We have commented in previous posts about a phenomenon we like to call "White Noise Syndrome", or the shifting of deaths from one age group to another when the drinking age is changed.  Sociologist Mike Males refers to this as a "seesaw effect".  This has been documented in several peer-reviewed studies, namely Males (1986), Asch and Levy (1987 and 1990), and most recently in Dee and Evans (2001).  Studies like Carpenter and Dobkin (2010) which find increases in deaths upon turning 21 (today, with a 21 drinking age) seem to dovetail with these results.  Of course, as with anything not every study has agreed with these results, and estimates of net effects varied, but they have been pretty tough to refute. 

Now a new study by economics student Dan Dirscherl (2010) at Notre Dame University further confirms the previous studies mentioned.  His award-winning paper, which uses a fixed-effects, difference-in-differences model on data from 1972-1994 finds that a drinking age of 21 (compared with a lower one) not only shifts deaths from 18-20 year olds to 21-24 year olds, but appears to result in a net increase in fatalities among 18-24 olds.  The effect was driven by males, while females saw no effect either way.  Interestingly, the effect on 18-20 year olds was statistically insignificant, while on 21-24 it was highly significant.  This is the dirty (not to mention deadly) secret of the supposed lifesaving effect of the 21 drinking age that the pro-21 crowd would rather sweep under the rug. 

One potential flaw to this study was that legal drinking ages of 18 and 19 (and even 20 for two states) were lumped together as states with an age limit below 21, compared with states at 21.  This could increase the noise in the data.  However, Miron and Tetelbaum (2009) found no statistically significant difference between drinking ages of 18, 19, or 20 on traffic fatalities in any of their models, even those models that found significant effects for a drinking age of 21 relative to 18.  (Of course, the best model found no lifesaving effects in the long run for MLDA 21 either.)  Another criticism one could make is that Dirscherl did not include data for those under 18.  Again, however, Miron and Tetelbaum found during a robustness check of their own study that a drinking age of 19, 20, or especially 21 increases fatalities of drivers under 18, contrary to what the "trickle-down" or "low-hanging fruit" theory predicts.  Still another criticism is that Dirscherl (like Miron and Tetelbaum) used total traffic fatalities and not "alcohol-related" ones.  But there is no reliable data for "alcohol-related" fatalities before 1982, and even after that the data can be biased due to differences in testing rates.  When using data going that far back, when about 2/3 of teenage fatalites were alcohol related, total fatalities would likely be sufficient, but surrogates like single-vehicle nighttime fatalities are a good robustness check.  And both studies by Asch and Levy do exactly that, with similar results. 

Of course, alcohol-related deaths among young people are by no means limited to the highways.  There is virtually zero evidence that non-traffic alcohol-related fatalities as a whole are significantly reduced by the 21 drinking age, and effects on specific causes of non-traffic death have been inconsistent at best.  In fact, from 1998 to 2005 (years during which enforcement of the 21 drinking age generally increased), these fatalities among 18-24 year olds increased significantly, including a near-tripling of alcohol poisoning deaths for this age group.  It is entirely plausible that forcing alcohol use underground for 18-20 year olds would make it more dangerous than it has to be, most notably for alcohol poisoning deaths (which are really just the tip of the iceberg of high-risk drinking).  An honest cost-benefit analysis of the 21 drinking age should take these deaths into account as well.

We did our own research as well, using the CDC WONDER database to look up any deaths that mentioned "alcohol" in the cause of death for 15-24 year olds.  They group ages by 15-19 and 20-24 instead of 18-20 and 21-24, but the data are still useful for our purposes.  Shown below are the alcohol-related death rates per million people in each of the two age groups.

In other words, raising the drinking age to 21 appears to have been a shell game at best, and those who support it have quite a bit to answer for.  It's a lot like the movie White Noise 2, hence our term for this unfortunate phenomenon.

More Evidence Drinking Age is Irrelevant to "Big Booze"

One common thought-terminating cliche that the pro-21 crowd loves to use to discredit their opponents is to try to link them to Big Booze (i.e. the alcohol industry).  But there is really no hard evidence that Big Booze would respond to changes in the legal drinking age with anything more than a collective shrug. 

A case in point is SAB Miller, the resulting multinational merger of South African Brewery and Miller Brewing Company (who also owns Coors and Molson).  Recently there has been some talk about South Africa considering raising its drinking age from 18 to 21 (which we hope does not happen), yet a recent article dismisses any claims that such a change would affect the company's share prices.  Why?  The quote below says the gist of it:

The general practice found in countries where the age limit for drinking is 21 is that those teenagers in the 18 to 20 years range ask legally-competent people to buy beer for them. This is also expected by commentators to happen in South Africa as well, as it does in many other parts of the world where 21 is the legal drinking age.

Coupled with another quote:  "Teenagers are not necessarily a huge part of SAB's business in the first place".  Not even in a nation like South Africa where the drinking age is 18 and very poorly enforced.

And there you have it.  No significant effect on the alcohol industry as a whole.  But what about the restaurant/bar industry?  Surely they would be affected, right, since it would shift drinking away from bars and toward underground parties?  In 1984, the National Restaurant Association understandably came out against the national raising of the drinking age in the United States.  However, they have since backed down once it was a done deal, implying that they had far bigger fish to fry.  And the alcohol industry overall has been relatively silent on the issue both then and now.

While neither the alcohol nor the hospitality industries are making any serious effort to reduce America's drinking age, they have both* been (and still are) fighting tooth-and-nail every attempt to raise alcohol taxes, restrict advertising, lower blood alcohol limits for DUI, increase sobriety checkpoints, and install ignition interlocks for convicted drunk drivers.  All while the groups like the distiller-funded Century Council ostensibly dedicate themselves to fighting underage drinking (while supporting the 21 drinking age), supporting tough penalties for underage drinkers and social hosts, and even "reverse-stings" to bust underage purchasers (as opposed to those who profit from such consumption).  Now that really says something about the effectiveness of the 21 drinking age versus these other countermeasures they hate in reducing heavy and problem alcohol consumption (which constitutes the majority of Big Booze's revenue) among all ages.  But groups like MADD are so gung-ho about the sacred cow that is the 21 drinking age that they fail to see this obvious fact about how their foes operate.

So where do we, Twenty-One Debunked, stand on the countermeasures the industry opposes?  We support them, for the most part.  We believe that the alcohol taxes should be raised significantly, for all beverages (except microbrews), with the tax proportional to alcohol content.  We believe that alcohol advertising should not be allowed to target minors, and should be restricted to the greatest extent allowed under the U.S. Constitution, similar to tobacco.  We support reduced blood alcohol limits for driving, with graduated penalties that steeply increase with BAC level, and the penalties for the highest levels should be much higher than they are now.  We believe that first offenders should, at a minimum, be required to have ignition interlocks if (not when) they get their licenses back, revocations of which should be permanent upon the second offense.  These folks are ticking time bombs that will kill someone if left unchecked.  And while we have nothing in principle against checkpoints that are conducted properly, we believe that roving patrols are more effective and cost-effective in catching drunk drivers and saving lives. 

As for the drinking age, if our wish is granted and it is ever reduced to 18, we would support tough enforcement targeting vendors above anyone else, and only very modest civil penalties (if any) against underage drinkers themselves.  Until that day comes, we believe that liquor law violations involving 18-20 year olds (and no one under 18) should be made the lowest law enforcement priority and penalites dramatically reduced if not eliminated.  The drinking age should also never be used as an excuse to violate the Constitution.  Social host laws, at least for those over 18, should be repealed.  And no one of any age should be jailed or receive a lifelong criminal record solely for drinking alcohol in a manner that does not harm others, as the punishment does not fit the "crime".

It should also go without saying that Twenty-One Debunked does not, and will never, accept even a single dime from Big Booze or the hospitality industry.  No offense to them, but our integrity is worth much more than anything they could ever possibly offer.

*One such industry trade group is the American Beverage Institute, of which MADD's turncoat founder Candy Lightner is currently a member (or at least was back in the 1990s) despite still supporting the 21 drinking age as of 2008.  Also, take a look at some of the supporters of one of the federal government's most prominent pro-21 websites.

Latest Age of Onset Study Is Less than Meets the Eye

Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, a well-known drinking holiday, a new study comes out about the controversial relationship between age of onset of drinking and later alcohol dependence.

What the study apparently found was that 1) those who began drinking at all before the age of 11 (!) were statistically more likely to develop alcohol dependence than those who began later, and 2) those who began drinking regularly before age 21 were statistically more likely to develop alcohol dependence (but not alcohol misuse) than those who began later, with interestingly no statistically significant difference between those who began in early adolescence (11-14), middle adolescence (15-17), and those who began between 18-20 years of age. 

However, there is less here than meets the eye.  First of all, for regular drinking (defined as 2 or more drinks per week, an arbitrary distinction and not a real lot) they lumped together those who drank lightly or moderately with those who drank heavily, and lumped together those who started at exactly 21 with those who started much later.  Well DUH--those who had any interest at all in alcohol would likely have begun drinking at least occasionally before 21, and those who would actually wait that long tend to be nondrinkers for the most part. People uninterested in alcohol are unlikely to become alcoholics, plain and simple.  This is especially true since those individuals who began drinking regularly after 21 but did not initiate any drinking before 21 were excluded from the study.  Also since the study only followed participants to age 33, those who began drinking after 21 may not have had enough time for problem drinking to show up in the study.  As for those who began drinking regularly between 18-20, it is likely that most of them had their first drink well before 18 since most of that study's participants began drinking very early, but this distinction was not made among the reportedly regular drinkers.  And those who had their first drink at 18-20 were found to be 65% less likely to become alcoholics than those who began before the age of 14, making it rather curious why the researchers did not adjust for this in the analyses of regular drinking.

Other flaws existed as well.  The study did not adequately control for general deviant tendencies, and deviant people are more likely to break the law (such as the MLDA), more likely to begin drinking much earlier (or later) than their peers, and more likely to become alcoholics.  The only control variables were race/ethnicity, gender, poverty, tobacco, and illicit drug use, despite the fact that many other variables (e.g. genetics, childhood trauma, peer group, IQ, etc.) may very well have had an effect.  Also, the sample size was fairly small and was likely not representative of the general population, since all participants were initially recruited from schools in high-crime areas of Seattle.  Reporting bias, especially on the question of regular drinking, may also be an issue. Another issue was the apparently non-monotonic relationship between age of onset of regular drinking and alcoholism (starting at age 18-20 had a slightly higher odds ratio than at age 14 and under, though statisically insignificant), which is rather suspicious and runs counter to the idea that the relationship is primarily due to differences in brain development.  Finally, the adjusted odds ratios were 1.6-1.8, and all honest epidemiologists know that odds ratios below 2.0 should be taken with at least a grain of salt, if not a whole pound.

To really control for as many confounders as possible, twin studies are the best choice since their genetics and environment are about as similar as one can get.  A recent twin study (Agrawal et al. 2009) with a larger sample size in Australia found that, while drinking before age 15 was associated with a significantly greater incidence of alcohol dependence, the effect of age of onset diminishes after that point and practically disappears from age 18 onwards. Those who began drinking at 18 were not significantly more likely to become alcoholics than if they had started at 19, 20, 21, or even 23+. Funny how the effect of age on later alcoholism levels off precisely at the country's legal drinking age, 18.  And in a country that has roughly the same rate of alcoholism that we do despite their lower drinking age.

To prove causation as per the Bradford-Hills criteria, one crucial criterion is "biological plausibility."  While that is not exactly the same thing as "truth", without it one cannot have a great deal of confidence that a relationship is truly causal.  Animal studies are often used for this purpose, but rodents are hardly ideal to test a hypothesis like this since their adolescence occurs far too quickly to distinguish between specific ages, not to mention the obvious fact that rats are not people.  Thus, such studies have been rather inconsistent.  Nonhuman primates, such as monkeys, are better suited to such a task.  And the only known monkey study of whether earlier-onset drinkers are more likely to get hooked than later-onset ones shows no connection with age of onset per se, even though the monkeys were dosed with "binge" amounts.  This suggests that genetic, social, and cultural factors are most likely far more important than age of onset for humans, if the latter is even causal at all, and that the difference between an age of onset at 18 vs. 21 is practically negligible.

Also, one ought to take a look at a previous post about our neighbor to the north.  Again, they also have a roughly equivalent alcoholism rate as the USA, despite Canada's lower drinking age as well as their demographic and geographic features more conducive to heavy drinking.  Besides, it's not like the 21 drinking age really stops 18-20 year olds from drinking--even the latest study showed that nearly 9 out of 10 people will do so before age 21, many of them having initated at or before age 15.  Thus, it is unrealistic to expect everyone to not drink a drop until 21 or later, and far better to teach moderation and responsible drinking.  Yes, there were a few people who waited until 21 or later before drinking, but that was also true in the Australian study, in a country whose drinking age has been 18 for decades (and over a century in some parts).  It's time for Americans to stick their heads out of their current anatomically-impossible positions and join the rest of the civilized world.

Former MADD President Busted for DUI

Former Gainesville (FL) MADD president Debra Oberlin, 48, got busted for drunk driving on Feb 24, blowing a whopping 0.239 BAC, nearly triple the legal limit.  Thank God no one was hurt or killed.   Hopefully they will throw the book at this ticking time bomb before someone actually is--according to MADD's own statistics, the average drunk driver does so an average of 88 times (!) before being caught.

We at Twenty-One Debunked can't help but feel a sense of schadenfreude about the fact that she was busted for the ultimate act of hypocrisy.  We all know what MADD stands for, and 48 is certainly old enough to know better.   As many readers already know, Twenty-One Debunked hates drunk driving with a passion and actually agrees with MADD on so many things with very few exceptions, most notably the 21 drinking age and the ancillary laws that serve no purpose other than to prop up this failed policy.  If they were to jettison their advocacy for unconstitutional age discrimination (and their neo-temperance mindset) and give their undivided attention to actual drunk driving by all ages instead, we would most likely become members of MADD.  That'll be the day.  Unfortuantely, they have effectively made the 21 drinking age (and its ancillary laws) the crux of their overall campaign, which ultimately detracts from their original purpose.

Like MADD, we support tougher penalties for drunk drivers, tougher DUI enforcement, lowered BAC limits (albeit with graduated penalties), higher alcohol taxes, better alcohol education and treatment, and more control over alcohol outlet density.  No argument there.  Unlike MADD, however, we believe in lowering the drinking age to 18, abolishing dram shop and social host laws (at least for those over 18), and giving additional attention to other forms of reckless and negligent driving (cell phones/texting, speeding, etc.) that now kill and maim more people than drunk driving does.  Canada (along with several other countries) has proven that raising the drinking age to 21 was completely unnecessary for saving lives, as they have made more progress in reducing fatalities than we have despite not violating the civil rights of 18-20 (or 19-20) year old young adults.

Shame on you, Debra!

We Debunk the New Zealand Report

A New Zealand-based "pro-family" (read: socially conservative) group called Family First New Zealand has published a new report on why the drinking age in NZ should be raised to 21.  The report shows a picture of a (presumably teenage) female passed out drunk on the cover, no less.  However, there are several flaws with this one-sided report, known as Young People and Alcohol, and it is up to folks like us to debunk it.

The so-called new scientific evidence about neurological effects of alcohol that they cite involves either 1) animal studies, 2) studies of truly heavy drinking humans, and/or 3) adolescents who were under 18 or began drinking before the age of 18, having little to no relevance for 18-20 year olds.  In fact, we have known for a long time that alcohol is neurotoxic at high doses, and heavy drinking at any age is harmful--no surprise there.  And the few studies of fairly low-level alcohol use in adolescent humans generally had small sample sizes as well as small "effect sizes" with limited or unknown practical significance, and most such studies were cross-sectional rather than longitudinal.  Nor have the apparent adverse effects on the brain been shown yet to be irreversible.  Reporting bias can also skew the results, such as when heavy drinkers underreport how much they drink.  It is also worth noting that not a single neuroscientific study they cited that actually compared those who began drinking at 18 versus those who began at 21, and as well as the fact that no rodent studies would have the power to distinguish between this age difference.  And the single nonhuman primate (i.e. monkey) study they cited involved chronic heavy drinking during adolescence, not moderate drinking.

Other parts of the report were purely speculative and theoretical, and/or were based on old research that we at Twenty-One Debunked have already done a rather good job of, well, debunking.   Or the effects discussed were true for all ages, not just those under 21.  Ironically, one of the studies they cited was an Australian twin study that found that the risk of later alcohol dependence, while inversely related to age at first drink, dropped dramatically after age 15 and leveled off from 18 onward.  But what can we really expect from a report whose primary author, a self-described "enlightened Puritan American", also believes that television causes half of all violent crime in the USA, and that Facebook somehow causes cancer?

Comparisons between the USA (drinking age of 21) and Canada (drinking age of 18 or 19 depending on the province) also render the authors' claims highly questionable. In international standardized tests, Canadian 12th graders beat their American counterparts despite the former having similar or lower scores in 4th grade. In fact, nearly all the countries that beat us set the drinking age at 18 or even lower!  The alcoholism rates in both the USA and Canada are also roughly equivalent, and the adult per capita alcohol consumption rate is actually slightly lower in Canada. Alcohol-related death rates, both in terms of liver cirrhosis as well as "alcohol use disorder", are also lower in Canada according to the World Health Organization, as are traffic fatalities despite the country's somewhat more rural nature. In fact, Canadians live on average three years longer than Americans. And the rates of violent crimes, especially the most serious ones like homicide, tend to be significantly lower in Canada as well, for both teens and adults. 

Another serious flaw was that the authors assumed that the brain is fully developed by age 25, and implicitly much more so than at age 18.  While we concede that 21 is slightly closer to the actual age than 18, one would still be off by about two or three--wait for it--decades.  That's right--at least some parts of the brain (e.g. the corpus callosum and even the prefrontal cortex) continue to develop well into the 40s, and myelination (white matter growth) can continue to about 40 years of age.  Which partly explains why a 50 year old typically has a bit more difficulty thinking in new ways than a 20 year old, with the trade-off of (hopefully) somewhat better impulse control.  In fact, certain types of cognitive ability seem to peak as late as 53, while other types peak earlier, after which they decline.  And new research shows that even the middle aged brain is vulnerable to the long-term effects of excessive drinking.  As we have repeatedly said, 21 is an arbitrary drinking age in light of both science and ethics, and it has no place in a free society where 18-20 year olds are considered legal adults for essentially all other purposes.

The report's outright denial of the "forbidden fruit effect" of the 21 drinking age is even more astounding.  It ignores, for example, the fairly extensive research of college students by Dr. Ruth Engs and replicated by others that demonstrates that this phenomenon is real, at least for that demographic group.  Which is precisely what happened during Prohibition as well.  It's the Law of Eristic Escalation in action--impostion of order leads to escalation of chaos.  And it's no wonder that Big Booze, who routinely and vigorously fights any proposed alcohol tax hike, advertising restriction, or even some DUI laws, did not put up much of a fight when the drinking age was raised in the USA--they knew that (except for bars) they'd still have more than enough customers and could conveniently avoid having to confront America's notorious drinking problem among adults over 21.

While the report really does not make a strong case for a legal drinking age of 21, and many of the claims they make are inconclusive at best, we must not ignore any sound science when it is available.  We at Twenty-One Debunked feel that the best take home messages of this report are that 1) excessive drinking should be avoided at any age, and 2) that perhaps it is prudent for teens to delay the onset of drinking (or at least doing so regularly) to age 18 or older, and especially avoid drinking before age 15.  While we do not encourage alcohol use at any age, or the breaking of any existing laws, we disagree with the central thrust (about the legal drinking age) made by the authors of this biased report.

To the Kiwis reading this, take it from us Yanks:  the 21 drinking age does NOT work.  If you think it will make your nation's rather notorious drinking problem magically go away, think again.  The problem affects all ages, and scapegoating young people for adult problems is the refuge of the coward.

More Evidence that 21 Is an Arbitrary Number

Only in the nanny-state we call the United States of America would anyone assume that 1) there is absolutely no safe level of alcohol for an 18-20 year old, and 2) that as soon one turns 21, they are magically able to safely consume as much booze as they please, as long as they don't drive (which they never will, because they are far too mature of course).  Absurd?  You bet.  But our nation's alcohol policy unfortunately presumes exactly these things.  And we are guaranteed to remain unable to solve the American drinking problem until we confront both of these baseless and paralyzing assertions.

The first assertion falls apart when one considers that there is a safe level for just about everything, even (gasp!) radiation.  And even water can be toxic (even deadly) at a high enough dose.  It's the dose that makes the poison.  While it is true that children may not be able to handle even small amounts of a substance that adults can, remember that for essentially all medications, 18 year olds (who are not "children," by the way) are considered developed enough to handle an "adult dose."  In fact, people 18-20 years old are even considered old enough to legally put a known neurotoxin (nicotine) into their bodies!  And countries that allow 18 year olds to drink legally (such as Canada and all of Europe but Iceland) have somehow not become nations of brain-damaged alcoholic felons.  While we at Twenty-One Debunked do not encourage alcohol consumption at any age, or the breaking of any existing law, we clearly take exception to the "no safe level" claim as it concerns 18-20 year olds.

The second assertion simply defies logic and common sense, as well as established scientific facts.  Excessive alcohol consumption is dangerous at any age, even among middle-agers.  Amid all the sensational scare tactics about alcohol-related brain damage in people under 21, a recent study found that "binge drinking" in middle-aged adults may increase the risk of later dementia.  While we at Twenty-One Debunked dispute the overly broad definition of "binge drinking" that the study used (hence the scare quotes), there had to have been some real binge drinkers among them, especially since the study was done in Finland (a Nordic country with a notorious drinking problem).  Interestingly, teetotallers were also at increased risk of later dementia, echoing well-known findings about the relationship between alcohol and cardiovascular disease.  In a nutshell, moderation appears to be the key.

Latest Study Wields "Occam's Butterknife"

More educated readers of this blog are probably familiar with Occam's Razor--the observation that a relatively simple explanation is more likely to be correct than a more complicated one.  Some folks have satirically come up with the term Occam's Butterknife, which is the erroneous belief that a more complicated explanation beats a simple one.  A case in point is the latest study on how lowering the drinking age in the USA might affect college binge drinking.

The study uses a mathematical model to suggest that lowering the drinking age would not reduce binge drinking.  However, there are significant problems with the study and its conclusion:

• The study is purely theoretical, not empirical.
• The only empirical data considered is current self-reported survey data where the drinking age is 21, which may be biased, and levels of enforcement in various colleges.
• The definition of "heavy episodic drinking" is questionable in the absence of context.
• The study modeled a change in the drinking age to 19, not 18.
• The study only looked at two variables--"misperception" (social norms) and "wetness" (availability/enforcement).
• Most campuses are actually very "wet" in practice.
• Variables such as the dangerous effects of forcing alcohol underground are not considered.
• Consequences of drinking were not considered.

Thus, while the study was relatively complicated in terms of the mathematics used, it does not prove that lowering the drinking age to 18 is a bad idea, or that keeping it at 21 is a good idea on balance.

We at Twenty-One Debunked also find it rather funny that the authors of the study said that lowering the drinking age to 18 would be a "radical social experiment," when in fact, the current drinking age of 21 is the real radical social experiment, both internationally and in terms of our nation's own history.  And a failed one nonetheless.