Friday, April 11, 2025
Yet Another Myth Bites The Dust
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.
Wednesday, April 2, 2025
The Law Of Eristic Escalation Revisited
Or, "Politics In One Lesson"
There is an eternal law of nature that at once explains just about everything, and even makes politics possible to finally understand. It is called The Law of Eristic Escalation:
Imposition of Order = Escalation of Chaos
By that, it pertains to any arbitrary or coercive imposition of order, which at least in the long run, actually causes disorder (chaos) to escalate. Fenderson's Amendment further adds that "the tighter the order in question is maintained, the longer the consequent chaos takes to escalate, BUT the more it does when it does." Finally, the Thudthwacker Addendum still further adds that this relationship is nonlinear, thus rendering the resulting escalation of chaos completely unpredictable in terms of the original imposition of order.
We see the real world consequences of this in everything from Prohibition to the War on (people who use a few particular) Drugs to zero tolerance policies to Covid lockdowns to sexual repression and so much more. And, of course, especially in the ageist abomination that is the 21 drinking age. Any short-term benefits that these arbitrary and coercive impositions of order may provide is entirely outweighed when they inevitably backfire in the long run. Miron and Tetelbaum (2009), Asch and Levy (1987 and 1990), and Males (1986), etc. illustrate this very nicely in the case of the 21 drinking age.
Perhaps that is why most bans on various things have historically had a track record that is quite lackluster at best. Ironically, bans tend to give more power to the very things that they seek to ban.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, you finally understand politics.
P.S. The Dutch seem to understand this better. They even have a proverb: "when you permit, you control", which is the antithesis of the American proverb, "when you permit, you promote". Carl Jung would also likely have a field day with that as well.
Tuesday, April 1, 2025
OK You Win. You Have Convinced Us.
APRIL FOOLS!
Monday, March 31, 2025
Why Is The 21 Drinking Age So Sacred?
Few laws are as uniquely sacred in the USA today as the 21 drinking age laws. They are essentially a "third rail" of politics, even more so than Social Security. And yet these laws are widely disobeyed by the vast majority of Americans at some point in their lives. So what gives?
It clearly cannot be about saving lives, because speed limits would be even more of a matter of life and death, and yet those are never treated even remotely as sacred as the 21 drinking age. They are openly flouted and scoffed at by most people, and the penalties and enforcement are pretty lax to this day. The erstwhile national 55 speed limit was in fact mercilessly mocked and gradually weakened until it was ultimately jettisoned in the 1990s despite (ultimately quite accurate) warnings of "blood on the highways". And even worse, speed limits on other streets, roads, and especially "stroads" have been raised higher as well, with very deadly consequences, and a fortiori for pedestrians and cyclists (hey, remember them?). Speed kills, even more so than drunk driving these days, and yet, as one commenter noted, we don't have "Mothers Against Fast Driving", we have the Speed Channel instead. Likewise, distracted driving, especially by smartphones, is at an all-time high, and people just cavalierly LOL it off for the most part.
(It's all fun and games, until they crash right into a kid on a bike, who is killed or maimed. Not so funny now, is it?)
And even for drunk driving, the current (generous by international standards) blood alcohol limit of 0.08% for people over 21, let alone lowering it to 0.05% (except in Utah), seems to have far less popular support than the 21 drinking age or zero-tolerance laws for people under 21.
And also, when they cut the federal alcohol taxes in 2018, ostensibly to boost the economy, there were few voices against it, and even those voices were far more muffled than to they would have been if they had had the temerity to (gasp!) even partially repeal the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984. So the drinking age is not even entirely about alcohol per se then, even if there is clearly some neo-prohibitionist impulse involved as well.
Thus, we can conclude that the 21 drinking age is really about power and control, along with an irrational fear of young people. Which of course dovetails with being comparatively lax with the privileged age group that is currently in power, as tyranny is always whimsical. And now the proverbial emperor is naked for all to see.
Saturday, March 29, 2025
Chesterton's Fence Revisited
One very important philosophical principle is that of Chesterton's Fence, by author G.K. Chesterton.
Per Wikipedia:
"Chesterton's fence" is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood. The quotation is from Chesterton's 1929 book, The Thing: Why I Am a Catholic, in the chapter, "The Drift from Domesticity":
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."
In other words, before you remove or destroy a fence (or policy), make sure you know why it was put up in the first place. That's just common sense.
(Hey DOGE, are you listening? Seriously!)
Of course, the apocryphal "Five Monkeys Experiment" is a good foil to counterbalance that principle. That is, sometimes various policies really have outlived their usefulness, were rotten from the start, and/or do far more harm than good. And wisdom is to know the difference between the two cases.
(The latter pitfall is sometimes called "status quo bias".)
So where does that leave the 21 drinking age then? Well it seems to be a bit of both, in fact. On the one hand, the reason why they raised the drinking age to 21 in the 1980s was ostensibly to combat drunk driving at times when drunk driving was widely considered normal and socially acceptable, and generally not taken very seriously. At the same time, any other justification (such as junk neuroscience) given for it now is an after-the-fact rationalization, so anything other than drunk driving came be considered a "Five Monkeys" case. Back to the original justification, that has long since passed it's sell-by date for the following reasons:
- Countries that did NOT raise their drinking ages to 21, even car cultures like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, saw similar or greater declines in teen and young adult traffic deaths, both alcohol-related and otherwise, than the USA did during and right after the time that the drinking ages were in flux. They did not diverge in the expected direction, and if anything diverged in the "wrong" direction.
- The 12 states that had been 21 since the 1930s and 1940s, and thus did not change their drinking ages at all since then, also saw similar declines in teen and young adult traffic deaths during that time period.
- Several good and rigorous studies, including, but not limited to, Miron and Tetelbaum (2009), Asch and Levy (1987 and 1990), Dee and Evans (2001), Grant (2011), and others, have either cast major doubt on the idea of the 21 drinking age having a significant net lifesaving effect, or even debunked it entirely.
- It's literally well into the 21st century now. Drunk driving is no longer socially acceptable in the USA, and is taken far more seriously now than it was in the 1970s and early 1980s. America is almost a completely different country now than it was back then.
- Rideshare services like Uber and Lyft exist now as well, and young people are taking longer than ever now to get their driver's licenses.
- We know now that there are far more effective ways of reducing alcohol-related harms of all kinds, such as raising the taxes on alcohol, limiting alcohol outlet density, improving alcohol education, and most importantly of all, seriously cracking down on actual drunk driving, drunk violence, drunk vandalism, and stuff like that. Rather than merely "flatten the curve", doing so can actually CRUSH the curve for good.
So what are we waiting for?
Would A Graduated Drinking Age Be Better? (Part Deux)
Sunday, March 16, 2025
Would A Graduated Drinking Age Be Better?
Friday, March 7, 2025
Prohibition Versus Taxation Revisited
Blast from the past: Rediscovering two studies from the 1990s by Professor Donald S. Kenkel:
PROHIBITION VERSUS TAXATION: RECONSIDERING THE LEGAL DRINKING AGE (1993)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1465-7287.1993.tb00389.x
"The legal drinking age targets a group at a high risk of alcohol-related problems. This paper argues that taxation could achieve the same benefits as the legal drinking age at a substantially lower social cost. Existing empirical research suggests that simultaneously lowering the legal age to 18 and taxing alcohol purchases at between 12 to 86 percent of the current price would achieve the same results as the current legal age. Levying a special teen tax only on young adults would minimize its social costs. Teen tax revenues between $564 million to $4.03 billion measure the net social gain of replacing the current prohibition on young adults' alcohol purchases with a taxation policy."
And the other one from three years later:
NEW ESTIMATES OF THE OPTIMAL TAX ON ALCOHOL (1996)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1465-7295.1996.tb01379.x
"In this paper I use a new data set to estimate the optimal alcohol tax rate. As a benchmark, the empirical results imply that the optimal tax rate is over 100 percent of the net-of-tax price. However, alcohol taxation is a second-best solution to the problems associated with alcohol abuse. I conclude that the optimal alcohol tax rate would be much lower if punishment for drunk driving were more certain and severe. Government provision of information about the health consequences of heavy drinking would also remove part of the efficiency rationale for alcohol taxes."
Twenty-One Debunked does NOT support the idea of different tax rates for different ages, as that idea would likely be impractical and still discriminatory. It is essentially a left-brain dominant idea that mistakes the map for the territory, and almost a full-blown category error. In that vein, Kenkel really begins to coast after being off to a good start otherwise. And, as we see from the second study three years later, the level of the optimal tax is within the range of what would be needed to offset the putative social costs of lowering the drinking age to 18, and vice-versa.
And as we have seen from Miron and Tetelbaum (2009) and Dee and Evans (2001), and many other studies, the supposed benefits of the 21 drinking age are overstated at best, and likely non-existent in the long run. And in fact, Miron and Tetelbaum also found by the way that the beer tax has a larger lifesaving effect than the 21 drinking age.
Putting it all together, even a relatively modest hike in the alcohol taxes would be enough to offset the supposed negative effects of lowering the drinking age to 18, especially if we also make the punishment for DUI more certain and severe (which we certainly support). In fact, the late Mark Kleiman (hardly a libertarian zealot) actually recommended many years ago that we should abolish the drinking age entirely, and raise the alcohol tax to a level that would roughly double the price of alcohol (similar to current Canadian prices). And while the Overton window would strongly preclude something so audacious at this time, he does make a good point regardless.
So what are we waiting for? Lower the drinking age to 18, raise the alcohol taxes, get tougher on actual drunk driving and drunk violence, and let America be America again!