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.

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.

Thus, having applied the principle of Chesterton's Fence, we can conclude that the 21 drinking age can be safely tossed aside like so much garbage, and without looking back.

So what are we waiting for?