What Would The Optimal Vice-Tax Policy Be?

Ever since the invention of taxation thousands of years ago, there has always been much controversy about it.  One of the oldest (if not the oldest) types of tax is the excise tax, which is an indirect tax on specific goods and services.  Common examples in the USA and most other countries include taxes on things like alcohol, tobacco, and gasoline/diesel fuels.  Though originally intended primarily to raise revenue, and highly effective in that regard, such taxes can also have a Pigouvian logic to them:  they help offset negative "externalities" related to the consumption of such goods/services, and also help to reduce such consumption and externalities as well.  Of course, such reasoning only adds to the controversy surrounding the idea.

We at Twenty-One Debunked believe that such taxes are a good idea on balance, and are infinitely preferable to prohibition, including "selective prohibition" for young adults under 21.  We have noted in several previous posts how such taxes are far more efficient than the blunt sledgehammer of prohibition, not to mention cost-effective as well.  In most cases, the taxes already exist and it is simply a question of raising and/or tweaking them, they raise revenue rather than cost it, and they don't violate anyone's civil rights either.

After reviewing the literature and thinking very hard about it, Twenty-One Debunked has come up with the following recommendations about various vice and fuel taxes.

Alcohol

• Raise and equalize the federal taxes on beer, wine, and distilled spirits to the real (inflation-adjusted) 1991 level for spirits:  $24/proof-gallon in 2016 dollars.  (Note how it's proportional to alcohol content)
• Beer of 6% ABV or less should be allowed to treated as a flat 5% ABV per barrel for tax purposes.
• Microbrewers should be exempt from any such tax hikes, at least on the first two million barrels per year.
• Adjust all taxes for inflation annually from now on.  Fix it, and forget it.

Tobacco 

• States with cigarette taxes less than $1.00/pack should raise them to between $1.00-$2.00.
• States with cigarette taxes greater than $2.00/pack should cut them to between $1.00-$2.00.
• Don't raise the federal cigarette tax any further, except to keep pace with inflation.
• All taxes on tobacco products should be equalized across types of tobacco products, and collected at the producer rather than the retail level.
• Adjust all taxes for inflation annually from now on.  Fix it, and forget it.

Cannabis

• Legalize and tax recreational cannabis at a rate of $10-50/ounce on average, adjusting it up or down proportional THC content.
• Collect such taxes at the producer level rather than the retail level.
• Medical cannabis should be exempt from such taxation.

Fuel

• Raise the federal gas tax (and diesel tax) by a penny per week until it is $0.50/gallon higher than now.  (Or $1.00/gallon higher than the status quo if we remain without a carbon tax-and-dividend).
• Call it "A Penny for Progress".
• Give a modest "prebate" to all licensed and registered vehicle owners over the age of 21 (or 25).
• Adjust it for inflation annually from now on.  Fix it, and forget it.

Road Tax 

•  As more and more electric and alternative-fuel vehicles replace gas and diesel ones, a new source of highway infrastructure funding will be necessary.
• Pro-rate vehicle registration fees (road tax) by the number of miles traveled in the past year.  Record odometer readings at each annual safety inspection, and adjust registration fees up or down accordingly.

So what are we waiting for?

Gas Prices Down, Traffic Deaths Up in 2015

While cheaper gas is generally good for the economy and the average person's wallet, unfortunately it also seems to come at a fairly high cost:  more traffic fatalities.  The latest data suggest that was the case in 2015.  After stubbornly hovering between $3.50 and $4.00/gallon from 2011-2014, gas prices on average plummeted to around $2.00 from the second half of 2014 into 2015, and even dropped below $2.00 in early 2016--a seven-year low.  And traffic deaths apparently rose to a seven-year high in 2015, nearly 8% higher than the previous record-low reached in 2014.  Additionally, preliminary data for the first half of 2016 in several states also show that traffic deaths are likely to be the same or higher than they were in 2015.

None of this should really come as a surprise.   As we have noted in a previous post in 2010, it has been known for quite some time now that there is a significant inverse correlation between gas prices and traffic crashes, including fatal ones.  And the link is especially true for younger drivers.  Carefully controlled studies have found this to be true, suggesting a true causal relationship.  Contrary to popular opinion, the price elasticity of gasoline is not zero, or even close to zero, and it seems to rise dramatically when prices go above $3.00/gallon.  Longer-term elasticities are about twice as strong, suggesting the effect builds over time.

The effects on fatalities are not limited to reduced vehicle miles traveled; while that drops too, even controlling for this we can see a decrease in deaths with higher prices.   "Discretionary" driving declines the most when gas prices rise, and most fatalities occur from this type of driving.  Speeding and aggressive driving also decline in an effort to save fuel and money.  Thus, the price elasticity for gasoline demand actually understates the effect on fatalities.  And while non-alcohol related crashes may be more affected by changes in gas prices, alcohol-related ones would be affected as well.

By that logic, it seems that one of the best ways we can reduce traffic fatalities (both alcohol and non-alcohol) would be to raise the gas tax.  Of course, that would make a lot of people mad.  But if it saves even one life, it's worth it, right?  Isn't that what groups like MADD have said about things like the 21 drinking age?  Judging by the lack of enthusiasm about raising the gas tax, it appears that the pro-21 crowd doesn't practice what they preach.  Or maybe it's all about liberty for "just us," not all.

If we know higher gas prices save lives, not to mention the planet, what are we waiting for?

The Evidence Is Clear: Taxation Works Better Than Prohibition

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  I believe that alcohol taxes should be raised significantly, and the drinking age lowered to 18.   The overwhelming weight of available evidence strongly suggests that alcohol taxes are far more effective, cost-effective, and socially efficient in reducing alcohol-related problems than the 21 drinking age can ever be.  And in the past few years we have even more evidence to show for it.

I have noted in the past that the landmark Miron and Tetelbaum study of 2009 has not only thoroughly debunked the idea that the 21 drinking age saves lives, but it also had a more subtle finding as well.  Namely, it also quietly confirmed the long-accepted finding that raising the beer tax actually does save lives, even if modestly.  And ironically, that was found when they tweaked the pro-21 Dee (1999) study that at first seemed to cast doubt on the beer tax--adding Alaska, Hawaii, and DC as well as more years to the model completely reversed Dee's original findings in that regard, as the original model apparently didn't have enough useful variation or statistical power to detect such results when state-specific trends were added to the regression.

Also, Ponicki et al. (2007) found that while there is supposedly a modest lifesaving effect of the 21 drinking age, high enough beer taxes can actually make that effect irrelevant as the two policies apparently act at cross-purposes.  When one is increased, the other becomes less relevant as a result, for obvious reasons.

Fast forward to newer studies on the effects of alcohol taxation and pricing.  Even pro-21 researcher Alexander Wagenaar appears to be a huge fan of raising alcohol taxes these days.  In 2009 and 2010, Wagenaar did two large meta-analyses on the effects of alcohol taxation on drinking as well as alcohol-related mortality and morbidity, respectively.  In both, the effects were clear:  it is quite effective indeed as a public health measure.  When alcohol taxes/prices go up, problems and deaths go down.  More recent studies also confirm such results as well.  No wonder Mark Kleiman famously said that, "Any sentence about drug policy that doesn't end with "raise alcohol taxes" is an incoherent sentence".

Thus, raising the alcohol taxes, even doubling or tripling them, should be a no-brainer.  So why aren't we doing it?   Clearly, the alcohol industry opposes any attempt to raise such taxes, and they always threaten a loss of jobs if they pass.  But there is really not much if any evidence that such a thing happens, and the industry consistently fails to produce any robust evidence in that regard.  As for the idea that alcohol taxes are regressive and hurt poorer folks and "responsible" drinkers, that is also not really true either:  the economic burden would fall mostly on heavier drinkers and wealthier folks, while moderate drinkers really wouldn't pay very much.  While I do not advocate extremely high taxes like they have in the Scandinavian countries, there is really no good reason not to raise and equalize all alcohol taxes back to at least the 1991 level for distilled spirits, adjust it for alcohol content, and index it for inflation from then on. Microbrewers, on the other hand, should be exempt from any tax hikes.

It is true that Thomas Jefferson said, "No nation is drunken where wine is cheap".  But that was then.  Nowadays, beer, wine, and even hard liquor have apparently become too cheap for our own good.  And far cheaper than back then or even a few decades ago, at least relative to most people's incomes.  Yet the social costs of excessive drinking have not gone down much, so there is a problem of increasing "externalities".  And unlike most policy measures, raising alcohol taxes would also raise revenue rather than cost it, and there would be no loss of individual rights either.  Clearly, it's a win-win-win situation for everyone except the heaviest drinkers and the merchants of death that profit from them (along with funeral directors, of course). 

For once, MADD is correct about something:  if it saves even one life, it's worth it.  I guess even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Violence Has No Place In Our Movement

At a time in history where various social justice movements are gaining rapid momentum, the question of the use of violence inevitably arises.  That is, under what circumstances, if any, is violence of any kind acceptable as a protest tactic?  While I am not a full-blown pacifist (for example, I believe in the use of physical force in cases of absolute and immediate self-defense, and no "duty to retreat" when one is truly cornered), and I will leave it an open question as to how "self-defense" is defined and whether or not violence has a place other social justice movements, I will say that I do NOT believe that violence as a protest tactic has any place in the movement to lower the drinking age or the broader youth-rights movement in general.  Period.

I'm sure some of us, young and old alike, may fantasize at times about using violence against police and judges who enforce the vile and ageist abomination that is the 21 drinking age and its ancillary laws that prop it up.  And you know what?  You are perfectly justified in your fantasies, and your grievances are absolutely NOT trivial.  I am the last person who would try to gaslight you in that regard.  But when one decides to act out those fantasies in the misguided hopes of redressing those very real grievances, that becomes a serious problem for our movement.  Most of us in the movement are non-violent, and any violence committed in the name our movement only gives ammunition to the other side, confirming ageist stereotypes and hardly makes us look like we are mature enough to drink at 18 or any other age for that matter.  Thus, adding violent tactics to our movement is far more likely to backfire than it would in other movements.

I am not against the use of non-violent civil disobedience, by the way.  But when it comes to aggressive, offensive physical force against law enforcement, judges, politicians, or even MADD for that matter, I will say this to any potential "lone wolves" considering such "propaganda by deed":  NOT IN OUR NAME!

As Gandhi would say, "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind".  And as I like to say, when you fight fire with fire, we all get burned in the end.  Keep that in mind when protesting or debating.

Vote Green, Not Brown!

We at Twenty-One Debunked just seriously lost some respect for California, a state that we, until fairly recently, regarded as one of the least-worst states in the country (though the bar is set rather low to begin with) in terms of social policy in general.  Looks like the Golden State just joined Hawaii, NYC, San Francisco, and a growing number of localities in this country in raising the purchase age for tobacco to 21, with Governor Jerry Brown (remember him?) signing it into law on May 4, 2016.   The law change takes effect on June 9, 2016, just a few weeks later, when the age limit will rise from 18 to 21 overnight without even so much as a grandfather clause.  Brown also signed other bills on the same day restricting e-cigarette use (i.e. "vaping") in public and expanding the coverage of various no-smoking zones, among other things, but the one that really stood out the most (and rankles the most with us) is the 21 smoking age.  The one exception:  active-duty military members age 18-20 can still buy cigarettes and other tobacco products.  But this exception is a rather hollow way of addressing the fundamental injustice of being old enough to die for one's country but being too young to smoke (or drink for that matter), and doesn't make things much better.  So even with this exception, Twenty-One Debunked still opposes this new law regardless.

Hopefully, there will be a ballot measure in November that will undo the hike in the smoking age.  Until then, though, we might just want to boycott all things from California whenever possible.  That includes major Hollywood movies (which still feature omnipresent product placement from Big Tobacco) and fruits/vegetables grown with fracking wastewater thanks to the very same Governor Jerry Brown.  VOTE GREEN, NOT BROWN!!!

Tobacco, The Ulitmate Dark Horse of Drugs

Almost immediately after posting a recent article about the roundly debunked "gateway drug theory", we at Twenty-One Debunked felt we should post another separate article about the particular case of tobacco, especially in the form of commercial cigarettes. While our organization does not generally view tobacco as a particularly high-priority issue, perhaps it is something we should be revisiting given both recent evidence as well as recent efforts to raise the smoking age to 21.

While the primary dangers of smoking tobacco (i.e. cancer, heart disease, stroke, emphysema, birth defects, etc.) have been well-known for decades, what has been much less appreciated is the neurotoxic properties of cigarettes.  The thing is, nicotine is a known neurotoxin, and it is likely that at least some of the thousands of other chemicals in cigarette smoke are also toxic to the brain as well.  One reported effect of nicotine is that it can "prime" the brain's reward system for addiction in general, including to other substances.  This seems to be particularly true for the early adolescent brain.  While these findings are based primarily on rodent studies, human studies seem to dovetail with this idea far more for tobacco than for cannabis or even alcohol.  Thus, the psychopharmacological aspect of the gateway hypothesis seems to hold true indeed for tobacco, and if there were such a thing as an actual gateway drug (which is a very big "if", if you ask us), tobacco would have to be it, hands down.

Additionally, tobacco is also emerging as a potential "dark horse" in the etiology of psychosis and schizophrenia as well.  This has been informally hypothesized for many years now while being overlooked by most researchers, and is only very recently beginning to be taken seriously by mainstream science.  Perhaps cannabis (which is often mixed with tobacco in many countries, and whose use is often predicted by prior and concurrent tobacco use in general) has been taking a major bum rap in that regard as well?  All while Big Tobacco has subtly and sedulously promoted tobacco smoking as "self-medication" for decades, of course.

That said, Twenty-One Debunked strongly opposes any attempts to raise the smoking age any higher than 18.  Instead, we (along with the TSAP) believe that we should deal with cigarettes the way we would deal with any other defective product such as the historical examples of the Ford Pinto, lawn darts (Jarts), leaded gasoline and paint, DDT, incandescent light bulbs, and old-style refrigerators.  Either 1) require the defects to be sufficiently fixed, or 2) failing that, remove such products from the market.  And yes, commercial cigarettes as they exist today are indeed defective by design in that they addict, enslave, and kill far more people than they have to.  Worldwide, they kill about 6 million people per year, hence the name of Robert N. Proctor's bombshell of a book, Golden Holocaust.

Since 2013, the endgame strategy that the TSAP (and Twenty-One Debunked) currently supports has been to let tobacco phase itself out by gradually reducing the nicotine content of cigarettes to a (relatively) non-addictive level.  Since 2009, the FDA now has the authority to set a legal limit on the nicotine content of tobacco products, as long as the limit is not zero.  Much research indicates that there is a threshold level of nicotine required to create and sustain addiction, and if all cigarettes were to fall below this threshold, smoking rates would plummet precipitously.  In fact, one tobacco executive was quoted as saying, "‘If our product was not addictive we would not sell a cigarette next week."  This idea was originally proposed by Henningfield and Benowitz in 1994, and has been endorsed by the American Medical Association and several other experts including Proctor himself.  Malcolm Gladwell also discussed it in his aptly-titled 2000 book The Tipping Point.   Thus, the TSAP recommends reducing the maximum nicotine content (not delivery) of cigarettes from the current level of 1-2% to less than 0.1% within 5 years, and doing the same for quasi-cigarettes (i.e. little cigars) and perhaps roll-your-own tobacco (but no other products).  That alone would reduce smoking prevalence by as much as 80% within a fairly short timeframe, with further reductions possible in the more distant future.  Alternatively (or in addition), the FDA could require the pH of such products to be raised to 8 or higher to discourage deep inhalation, as is naturally the case for most typical cigars and pipe tobacco currently.

The TSAP and Twenty-One Debunked also recommend that the following measures be taken as well:

• Ban the use of additives in cigarettes, especially those that are harmful or increase the addictiveness of tobacco.
• Ban the use of any radioactive fertilizers or harmful pesticides for growing tobacco.
• Phase-out the practice of flue-curing tobacco, which is a major resource hog and bad for the environment.
• Improve the quality control standards for tobacco products (and electronic cigarettes) to be at least as high as for food.
• End all government subsidies for tobacco farming and production.
• Divest completely from Big Tobacco at all levels of government.
• Vigorously enforce the current age limit of 18 for tobacco and e-cigarette sales to achieve 100% retailer compliance. 
• Continue to allow widespread availability of reduced-harm tobacco and nicotine products (i.e. snus, e-cigarettes, etc.) so that smokers can easily switch to less dangerous alternatives.
• Improve education and smoking cessation programs, funded by tobacco tax revenues.
• Give out free nicotine patches, gum, etc. to any smokers who want to quit.  NYC already does this. 

At the same time, the TSAP most certainly does NOT support outdoor smoking bans or any other policy that treats smokers like criminals or second-class citizens.  Smokers are NOT the villains here, as that dubious honor belongs to the merchants of death known as tobacco companies.  In fact, we have repeatedly pointed out that, far from being a drain on society, smokers actually save society money in the long run since they more than pay their way as far as taxes go.  Cigarette taxes, especially in NYC where they are extremely high, have basically become a "reverse Robin Hood" way to rob from the poor and give to the rich, since smoking has increasingly become a poor man's vice.  And the wide disparity in cigarette taxes across states has led to a serious black market for untaxed/low-tax/counterfeit/stolen cigarettes, with the main beneficiaries being organized crime syndicates and even terrorists.  Thus, we recommend that the handful of states with cigarette taxes higher than $2.00/pack reduce their tax to $2.00/pack or lower, and the states with taxes of less than $1.00/pack raise it to $1.00-$2.00/pack.  NYC should cut its tax in half.  At the federal level, we recommend no further tax hikes, but a national price floor of $5.00/pack including tax to discourage smuggling.

The tobacco industry has basically dug its own grave.  Time to push them in there, yesterday.

DARE Quietly Removes Cannabis From List of Gateway Drugs

Yes, you read that headline correctly.  The well-known drug and alcohol prevention program for kids, Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE), has quietly removed cannabis from its list of "gateway" drugs.  And they apparently have also stopped lying to kids about the purported dangers of cannabis in general as well.  That is probably because the recent evidence that debunked their previous propaganda has been overwhelming.  And that is a sign that "reefer sanity" is slowly starting to return to America.

DARE's current list of "gateway" drugs can be found on this page of their website.  Note that only two substances remain on that list:  1) tobacco, and 2) alcohol, in that order.  And even the part about alcohol, with warnings against the dangers of "underage" drinking, interestingly enough makes no specific mention of what the legal drinking age is or should be, as the actual words "twenty-one" and "21" are literally nowhere to be found in the text.  It does, however, note that 90% of young people will experiment with alcohol by age 18, and that only a small number abstain completely while an even smaller number become addicted and need help.  And the page encourages parents to, among other things, be good role models as far as alcohol and tobacco are concerned (which is important as that addresses the real pink elephant in the room).  Overall, DARE has really come a long way it seems, and we hope their recent progress continues.

We at Twenty-One Debunked should note, however, that we believe that the whole "gateway theory" (which should really be called the "gateway hypothesis") has been grossly overstated at best, even as far as alcohol and tobacco are concerned.  A few years ago, we wrote an in-depth article about this phenomenon, which the best evidence strongly suggests is really nothing more than a socially-constructed narrative.  Constructed by prohibition laws, disingenuous propaganda, and ageism/adultism, that is.

Why 18?

We at Twenty-One Debunked realize that, over the past several years, we have spent so much time and energy trying to convince people why the drinking age should NOT be 21, that we left ourselves wide open for criticism from the other end of the spectrum.  To wit, some have asked, either honestly or disingenuously, why 18?  Why not 16, or 13, or abolish it altogether?  Until recently, we have been ignoring such questions, but we now feel that such questions must be fielded properly after having debated exactly those questions in youth-rights forums and elsewhere.  If we keep ignoring such questions, we could perhaps alienate many in the youth-rights movement, while also ironically and inadvertently giving ammunition to the pro-21 side.

For a good set of arguments as to why the drinking age should be lowered from 21 to 18, and not be any higher than 18, please take a look at our intro page, as this post will only deal with the other side of the question (i.e. why not less than 18?) for the most part.  We have already established that the drinking age should never be any higher than the age of majority in a free society.  So what are our arguments for not pushing for lowering it any further than 18, exactly?

First and foremost, there is the issue of pragmatism, as there is truly a snowball's chance in hell of getting the drinking age lowered any further than 18 (which is hard enough as it is).  America is truly not ready for such a massive change, as one poll found that no more than 5% of American adults support lowering it to 16 (the same poll found 30% favored 18), and the last time any state had a drinking age below 18 was in the 1930s (Ohio was briefly 16 and Colorado had no age limit for a few years).  So aiming for a drinking age of less than 18 is basically a political non-starter, and will remain so until many, many years after lowering it to 18 (which itself is no small feat).  And pursuing such a goal, at least doing so openly, would alienate a huge chunk of potential supporters.

Secondly, even if it was politically feasible to lower the drinking age to 16 or abolish it altogether, such a move could foreseeably have unintended consequences if done too quickly and too soon.  The best studies such as Miron and Tetelbaum (2009) find that the "parade of horrors" that would supposedly occur if 18-20 year olds were allowed to drink legally would most likely not occur--but unfortunately the same can't be said about abolishing the drinking age or lowering it further.  There is simply not enough evidence to reassure anyone that such problems won't happen--and if they did, even if only in the short-term, that would backfire and set our movement way, way back to where it was in the late 1980s.

Third, as the pro-21 crowd is so fond of pointing out ad nauseam, "America is not Europe".  Culturally and otherwise, that is certainly true.  America is indeed a largely Anglo-style drinking culture in many ways, as well as a car culture.  The closest comparison country would be Canada, with a drinking age of 18 or 19 depending on the province.  So that should be our model for the time being, not Europe.  And the next closest ones would be Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, all 18.  In fact, nowadays most of the world sets the drinking age, or at least the purchase age, at 18, not 16.   Note as well that several European countries are also 18, and even Spain and France have recently raised their drinking ages from 16 to 18 (despite the fact that such laws are largely unenforced).

Fourth, recent advances in neuroscience have uncovered some rather unpleasant-to-acknowledge truths about the effects of alcohol on teenage brains, as the pro-21 crowd just luuuurrrrves to point out.  Granted, such findings would apply primarily to truly heavy drinkers under 18 (and especially under 15) rather than 18-20 year olds, and not all of the evidence is 100% conclusive either, but to blithely ignore such findings regarding early to middle adolescents only gives ammunition to the pro-21 crowd.  And even if you believe that banning people under 18 from drinking for that reason is patronizing and paternalistic, you still need to see the pragmatism in acknowledging that it is not solely a civil rights issue but also a public health issue as well.

Finally, we at Twenty-One Debunked already support decriminalizing drinking for people under 18, with the penalty for the young drinkers (if any) being no more than a civil fine with no criminal record.  And we also support allowing parents to legally give alcohol to their own children (within reason) at home or other private property as well, which is already legal in many states now.  Those things, along with lowering the legal drinking age to 18, should take away most of the objections to not lowering the age further or abolishing it.  Purists in the youth-rights movement may very well disagree with us, of course, but please remember that compromise is, as the saying goes, "the art of the possible".

Keep in mind, Twenty-One Debunked is not categorically opposed to a drinking age lower than 18 at some point in the (albeit most likely very distant) future.  But we no longer consider such a goal to be worthwhile for the foreseeable future, and are thus sticking with 18 as our goal.

Let America be America again, and lower the drinking age to 18.  If you're old enough to go to war, you're old enough to go to the bar.  'Nuff said.

Just Say NO to the Tobacco to 21 Act!

If some US Senators get their way, the entire nation will join Hawaii, NYC, and several other municipalites with a smoking age of 21 for tobacco.  Not only is the effectiveness of such an idea rather dubious, but just like the vile abomination that is the 21 drinking age it is ageist/adultist and tyrannical and has no place in a free society.  The age of majority is 18 in nearly every state, and in a free society no age limit for any civil right or privilege should ever be any higher than the age of majority except for senior citizen stuff and perhaps certain specific professions (i.e. President of a nuclear superpower) in which adulthood alone may not be fully sufficient.

We are especially disappointed in Senator Elizabeth Warren, an erstwhile favorite of the True Spirit of America Party.  She is one of the leading co-sponsors of the Tobacco 21 Act.  It's too bad since we at the TSAP love just about everything else about her.  Seriously.  If you are reading this, Sen. Warren, we strongly urge you to reconsider your position on this ageist and illiberal mockery of the age of majority.

Let America be America again.  Old enough to fight and vote = old enough to drink and smoke.  'Nuff said.

A Tale of Two Nations

The latest Monitoring the Future results for 2015 are in.  Among students in grades 8, 10, and 12, alcohol and tobacco use have both fallen to record lows, and the use of most other substances has either declined or shown no significant change from last year.  Cannabis has held steady as well after falling a bit last year.  "Binge" drinking (5+ drinks per occasion) has also fallen to a record low, and as we noted last year, extreme binge drinking (10+ drinks per occasion) has also been falling for several years now.

Meanwhile, things aren't quite so rosy for the American population in general.  While drunk driving deaths specifically are at a record low, alcohol-related deaths (excluding crashes, accidents, and homicides) have actually reached a 35-year high in 2014.  This increase in the death rate, which began around 2000, is likely due to two things:  the aging of the population, and a general increase in per-capita alcohol consumption since the late 1990s.  Drug overdose deaths have also doubled since 1999 as well, driven mostly by heroin and prescription opioids.

In other words, America's overall drinking (and drug) problem appears to be getting worse, but it is clearly NOT being driven primarily by young people.  Those Baby Boomers (and now Generation Xers) who complain about the problems of "kids today" might just want to look in the mirror before pointing the finger at Millennials (and now post-Millennials).  So can we finally stop with the "vicarious puritanism" already?

Have a Safe And Happy Holiday Season

It is that time of year again when the holidays are upon us, and many of us Americans (and around the world) will be celebrating with alcohol and/or other substances.  We at Twenty-One Debunked would like to remind everyone to be safe and celebrate responsibly.  There is absolutely no excuse for drunk driving at any age, period.  We cannot stress this enough.  It's very simple--if you plan to drive, don't drink, and if you plan to drink, don't drive.  It's really not rocket science, folks.  And there are numerous ways to avoid mixing the two.  Designate a sober driver, take a cab, use public transportation, crash on the couch, or even walk if you have to.  Or stay home and celebrate there.  Or don't drink--nobody's got a gun to your head.  And the same goes for other psychoactive substances as well.

Latest New Zealand Study Reeks of Junk Science

A recent study has come out that supposedly shows a long-term increase in "serious traffic crashes" among 18-19 year olds in New Zealand following the lowering of their drinking age from 20 to 18 in 1999.  Previous studies found only a short-term effect, if even any effect at all.  But upon closer inspection, there is far less here than meets the eye.

First and foremost, the maxim that correlation does not prove causation holds true for any observational study of this nature, especially with such relatively modest "effect sizes".  Secondly, the study used 20-24 year olds as the comparison group, and we at Twenty-One Debunked have repeatedly noted how doing so is problematic in light of Dee and Evans (2001), Asch and Levy (1987 and 1990), and Males (1986), who found that raising the drinking age to 21 merely redistributed (i.e. delayed) some traffic deaths from 18-20 year olds to 21-24 year olds after controlling for a host of other variables.  There is no reason to believe that the reverse couldn't happen when drinking ages are lowered.  Thirdly, the study in question did not actually show an absolute increase in traffic crashes among 18-19 year olds, only a relative "increase" relative to 20-24 year olds as both decreased dramatically but decreased faster for the latter group.  Finally, the study found no evidence of a "trickle-down" or spillover effect on 14-17 year olds despite the fact that NZ doesn't even have a hard drinking age, but rather just a purchase age of 18 with rather shoddy enforcement.  Though since 2013, the loophole that allowed furnishing to minors was partially closed among other changes, but the study does not include any data beyond 2010.

Furthermore, another recent study casts further doubt on the claim that lowering the drinking age led to any sort of "parade of horrors" that the pro-21 crowd likes to claim occurred as a cautionary tale.  Put simply, lowering the drinking age was not a disaster after all, nor would it likely be the case if done in the USA.

So consider this latest claim debunked.  Old enough to go to war = old enough to go to the bar.  'Nuff said.

Hawaii Raises Smoking Age to 21

Recently, the state of Hawaii has raised the smoking age to 21, effective January 1, 2016.  Much to our chagrin, Hawaii will become the first state to set the smoking age to 21, joining NYC and a few other localities around the nation.  And unlike NYC, this law actually penalizes the young smokers themselves.

Twenty-One Debunked has repeatedly noted how much we oppose raising the smoking age any higher than 18, for the same reasons we oppose the 21 drinking age.  Thus, we are calling for a tourist boycott of the state of Hawaii, beginning on January 1 and lasting for as long as the new law remains in effect.

Be VERY careful what you wish for, fellas!

In recent years, advances in neuroscience (of which we are still just barely scratching the surface) have led to an increasingly popular tendency to view teenagers and young adults (i.e. anyone under age 25) as having "underdeveloped brains" that somehow justify having their civil rights revoked or curtailed.  Of course, as we have noted before, that same neuroscience has shown that the human brain continues developing well into the 30s and even 40s (and possibly even beyond that), and that the development that occurs between 18-25 (and even a bit earlier) is basically on the same spectrum as the development that occurs after 25.  And that inconvenient fact is clearly ignored by The Powers That Be, for obvious reasons.  But for argument's sake, let's pretend for a moment that no significant brain development occurs after age 25 or so, shall we?

In case you haven't realized yet, this entire argument that young people under 25 should have less rights than people over 25 is really just a warmed-over version of a centuries-old and widely discredited ideology known as "biological determinism".  Similar arguments have been made in the past for black people, women, various immigrant groups, Jews, and other oppressed non-dominant groups in society.  Based on real or imaginary differences between groups, the dominant groups of the time would use such differences to justify their privilege over and oppression of the non-dominant groups. And essentially every single one of these arguments have been roundly debunked, and are really only taken seriously anymore by a few dodgy ideologues on the fringes (*cough* Charles Murray *cough*) and their brainwashed followers (*cough* Faux Noise *cough*).  That's not to say that the demographic groups in question are no longer oppressed or discriminated against (spoiler alert: they are), but today people are far less likely to openly claim "scientific" justifications for such discrimination/oppression than in the past.  Except when it comes to young people, for whom such junk science has apparently become de rigeur as of late. And the dominant group in this case, adults over 25, are certainly all-too-smug about it.  Nevermind that it too has actually been debunked by people like sociologist Mike Males among others. 

It should be obvious now that ageism/adultism is simply one more crucial component of the pyramid scheme known as the kyriarchy, which needs to end yesterday.  But what if there really was a demographic group that actually did show differences, in both physiology and behavior, that could (using the same dubious arguments) be used to justify that group's rights being curtailed?  Well, that group does exist, fellas, and I'm talking about you and me.  In other words, I'm talking about MEN in general, regardless of age.  Based on what we know from Ashley Montagu's 1953 bombshell of a book, The Natural Superiority of Women (last edition published in 1998) as well as its (sort-of) sequel Women After All by Melvin Konner, there are indeed enough brain differences to imply that, on average, males are basically the inferior gender.  Not only do our brains mature at a slower rate than for females, but we ultimately never really catch up completely.  In fact, the gender gap seems to actually widen with age.

Of course, it doesn't matter if we fellas think with our adenoids.  What really matters is how we ACT.  But here too, the evidence is rather abysmal:

• Contrary to stereotypes, we apparently really suck at driving, or at least we are more likely to take stupid risks behind the wheel.  And auto crash and fatality statistics bear this out rather well--and not just for young people, either. 
• Despite having a somewhat higher tolerance to alcohol than women on average (even after controlling for body weight), men are more likely to abuse alcohol and get into trouble with it.  Men are four times more likely than women to become alcoholics and four times more likely to drive drunk. 
• Violent crime of all kinds is overwhelmingly committed by men, especially violence against women. 
• But most crime is male-on-male, making us both dangerous AND endangered at the same time.
• At least 99% of all school-shooters and other mass-shooters have had one thing in common, aside from guns of course.  Care to guess what that is?
• Practically every war ever fought in history was started and waged by men.
• For the past 7000 years or so, most positions of power were overwhelmingly held by men.  And what happened?  We paved paradise and put up a parking lot, we created a desert and called it "peace".  We have devoured and suffocated our own empire, and we will all pay a heavy price for it soon enough.

And these differences between men and women greatly dwarf the differences between young people and older adults, at least when other variables such as socioeconomic status are accounted for.  That's the pink elephant in the room that the (mostly male) purveyors of the new anti-youth biological determinism don't want to talk about.  Why?  Because men are a privileged and dominant group in our society.  That's why.  DUH!

So be careful what you wish for, fellas.  Check your privilege, and your karma as well.  Yeah, you may laugh and be smug about it now.  Snicker, snicker.  But if the futurists are correct, and I think that they most likely are, women will eventually reclaim their rightful place as the new leaders of the free world.  And when that does happen, they will remember exactly how they were treated, so it really behooves us fellas to clean up our act yesterday--both in how we treat women as well as how we treat the younger generations.  The choice is ours, so let's make the right one.

What do the "Hookup Culture" and "Binge Drinking" have in common?

Turns out, they both have an awful lot in common indeed:

• Both terms are rather nebulously-defined concepts that can mean anything you want it to mean
• Both are fueled by the lamestream media's sensationalism, creating a "deviancy amplification spiral"
• Both are fueled by "pluralistic ignorance", i.e. people falsely believing that everyone else is doing it more than they are and more than is actually the case
• Both are fueled by a kind of androcentrism that persists in spite of the patriarchy's overall decline (i.e. women are expected to behave more like men rather than vice-versa, and men write the rules)
• Both are fueled by a sort of "tyranny of the structurelessness" and the persistent belief that they are the "only game in town" on college campuses (spoiler alert: that is NOT actually true)
• Both are fueled by our schizophrenic culture's ambivalence about both sex and alcohol
• Both, statistically speaking, tend to go together (albeit not always, though)
• Both are used as virtual bogeymen of sorts to advance regressive and illiberal agendas, often in the guise of "protecting" young people and especially women
• Both are often falsely blamed on feminism, when the reality is that, among individual women, there seems to be a somewhat inverse correlation between feminist beliefs and those behaviors.
• The existence and prevalence of both are heavy on anecdotal evidence, and very light on actual data.
• And both defining behaviors are actually less common now than in the past, with Millennials being less likely to drink and tend to have fewer sex partners than their Baby Boomer parents.  Even Jean Twenge of all people concedes this.

But don't expect the lamestream media to tell you any of that, though.  Why let mere facts interfere with a good story that can boost their ratings?

Happy (Belated) Mother's Day!

First of all, I would like to wish a very happy Mother's Day to all of the moms out there, especially those who support our movement to lower the drinking age.  And yes, there are plenty of them indeed.

Recently, I have been reflecting on the utter lack of diversity in our movement, most notably the fact that our movement is largely a sausage-fest for the most part.   And most of the women in our movement tend to be younger and tend to be non-mothers.  That is in no small part due to groups like MADD effectively monopolizing the issue and claiming to speak for all mothers, while those mothers who openly support lowering the drinking age are often viciously shamed for taking such a stance.  It is also the result of our movement unfortunately having a tendency to be at least somewhat androcentric, which then attracts more men than women, which makes it even more androcentric, and so on.  And that needs to change yesterday if we wish to make any sort of progress.  It was after all, women, and especially mothers, who were the main driving force for repealing Prohibition in 1933.  And the recent victories on cannabis legalization did not happen until more and more mothers were willing to stand up and be counted.  Witness, for example, the group known as "Moms for Marijuana".  Yes, you read that right--something that would have been unthinkable just ten years ago.  And our movement needs to do the same as well.

We at Twenty-One Debunked propose the creation of a mothers' group to act as a counterweight to MADD.   It could be called "Mothers for Responsibility", for example.  At the same time, us fellas in the movement need to remove all remaining traces of androcentrism in our movement and effectively make it  more gynocentric as well.  We need to take women's issues much more seriously.  With no apologies to MRAs, PUAs, MGTOWs, and other "manosphere" types who frankly need to be kicked off the island, so to speak.  Ditto for brocialists, manarchists, and (worst of all) macktivists--if you don't know what any of those are are, feel free to Google them.  And as readers may have noticed from our recent posts, Twenty-One Debunked (as well as the TSAP) is certainly evolving in the right direction as we speak.

Will Hawaii Raise the Smoking Age to 21?

The state of Hawaii is seriously considering joining NYC and a few other localities here and there in raising the tobacco smoking age to 21.  We at Twenty-One Debunked have already discussed in previous posts why we oppose raising the smoking age any higher than 18, just like we support lowering the drinking age to 18 and legalizing cannabis for everyone 18 and older as well.  Old enough to fight and vote = old enough to drink and smoke.  'Nuff said.

That said, if alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis were all currently legal for everyone 18 and older, and we had to pick ONE of them to ban (or raise the age limit to 21), I would nonetheless pick tobacco hands-down since it is the least useful and most harmful of the three.  It kills more people than all other drugs combined, and there are essentially no significant health benefits to cigarettes that cannot also be had by other means.  With perhaps some very rare exceptions, the risks of smoking tobacco far outweigh any possible benefits.  Unlike alcohol and cannabis, tobacco (at least in the form of traditional cigarettes) is typically not a recreational drug so much as it is an extremely addictive poison, and the only product that kills half of those who buy it.  And in terms of environmental destruction, pollution, and wasting resources, the other two substances don't even come close.

Latest Rat Study Repeats Same Old Mistakes

A recent rat study has been done that appears to justify the 21 drinking age at first glance.  But here's why it really doesn't:

1)  First of all, the study was done on rats, and rats are NOT people.
2)  There is no rat equivalent for 18-24 year old humans, as the "adolescence" in all rats essentially overlaps with infancy and does NOT overlap with adulthood.
3)  The human brain actually continues to develop well into the 30s and 40s, so 21 is an arbitrary age limit.
4)  Human brain development before 18, and especially before 15 or so, is qualitatively different and occurs on a much more fundamental level than that which occurs afterwards.

That's not to say that excessive drinking isn't harmful.  It is, at any age in fact, and especially so before 18.  But there is really no conclusive scientific evidence that drinking at 18 is any more harmful than at 21.

Besides, if the results of the numerous rat studies of the past actually did translate to humans in like fashion, then Canada, Australia, and Europe would all be nations of brain-damaged alcoholic felons!

The Kids Are (Mostly) Alright

The results of the annual Monitoring the Future survey of middle and high school students for 2014 were primarily good news overall.  Alcohol and tobacco use both dropped to record 40-year lows, and cannabis use saw the first decrease in years after steadily increasing since 2007.  Other drugs, both illicit and prescription, saw either decreases or no significant change in 2014, and most of those remained well below their most recent peaks.  Dangerous quasi-legal synthetic "designer drugs", such as "K2" (synthetic cannabis) and "bath salts", have plummeted to the lowest levels since they have first been measured.  And there was no substance that saw any significant increases in 2014.

One thing that makes such results remarkable is that 2014 was the first year that cannabis was fully legalized in Colorado and Washington, with a few more states on the way as well.  And there is currently zero evidence that any of the prohibitionists' fears have actually materialized.  Another remarkable observation is the fact that "extreme binge drinking" (i.e. 10+ drinks in the same occasion at least once in the past two weeks) among high school seniors has finally dropped to the lowest level since it was first recorded in 2005.  For example, from 2005-2011, it remained flat at 11%, and from 2011-2014 it had dropped by more than a third to 7%.  And lest you erroneously think that the longstanding 21 drinking age (or tougher enforcement thereof) is somehow the cause of that drop, significant decreases in teen drinking have also occurred in other countries where the drinking age is still 18.

But don't expect to hear such good news from the fearmongering mainstream media, of course.

Let's Make a Deal

Recently, there has been a bit of a push to ban fraternities in various colleges and universities in the hopes of reducing the serious problem of rape among college students, which is often fueled by alcohol.   This debate on whether or not to ban frats is not a new one, but was recently reopened following several scandals on the way several colleges currently (mis)handle the issue of campus sexual assault.  Some people think it is a great idea, while others feel that doing so would be throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water.

So where does Twenty-One Debunked stand on this particular issue?  Well, we should first and foremost note that the only thing that actually causes rape is the rapists themselves, period.   While alcohol (among other substances) can indeed fuel it and is often used as a weapon to incapacitate victims, rape would simply not happen without rapists.  And the onus should always fall on men not to rape in the first place, instead of falling on women not to get raped.  That said, many fraternities are notorious for being a virtual microcosm of rape culture, which consists of the various attitudes and behaviors that support rape in one way or another.  And while removing such groups from the equation would not eliminate rape entirely, it would certainly make a non-trivial dent in the problem, given that frat brothers are statistically about three times more likely to commit rape compared to college men who are non-members.  Interestingly, Greek organizations are mainly an American thing, since most other countries either don't have them at all, or in the case of Canada, they exist in far less prominence than they do over here.  Gee, I wonder why?

Thus, Twenty-One Debunked would basically be fine with banning frats to one degree or another, with the following caveats attached to the deal.  First, the drinking age needs to be lowered to 18 yesterday, and not only would that result in many frats having a "going out of business" party (since their speakeasy-like services will no longer be needed) or at least a reduction in their relative power and prominence, it would also result in at least somewhat safer drinking practices since alcohol would no longer be forced underground anymore.  Second, to avoid throwing out the baby with the bathwater, we should allow frats to continue existing if they become fully coed, including their leaders.  It's almost 2015 now, and it's about time!  And if any frats want to remain all-male, they should be able to do so if and only if they exist entirely off-campus and receive absolutely no recognition, endorsement, or privileges from the college, including use of campus facilities.  Do these things and the connection between fraternities and rape would simply wither on the vine rather quickly.

Of course, it should go without saying that the problem of sexual violence is by no means just a frat problem, and broader-based strategies for tackling it also need to be implemented yesterday as well.  We absolutely need to change the culture on this issue (an excellent campaign can be found here), as well as hold the perpetrators (and their accomplices/enablers) accountable regardless of what connections they have or what socioeconomic status they belong to.  And for the record, Twenty-One Debunked fully supports California's new "Yes Means Yes" law for colleges and universities.  Anything less would be uncivilized.

Think Globally, Act Locally

We clearly face an uphill battle to lower the legal drinking age to 18, no doubt about that.  So what can we do in the meantime, besides pressure the government to lower the drinking age?  There is one thing that local communities can do, and that is to effectively "nullify" the 21 drinking age by refusing to enforce it.  A good way to do this would be the following:

1. The local government should pass its own law declaring its own drinking age to be 18, state laws to the contrary notwithstanding.
2. Repeal all local social host laws (if any) that pertain to 18-20 year olds.
3. Declare the possession and consumption of alcohol by 18-20 year olds, and casual furnishing of alcohol to them, to be the lowest law-enforcement priority (LLEP), as long as no other laws are broken at the same time.
4. Issue "protection passes" to anyone aged 18-20 who lives, works or attends school in that municipality, and make selling alcohol to such people the LLEP as well.  Such passes would effectively enable their holders (and only their holders) to buy alcohol and enter bars in the town.

The "protection pass" idea would help keep outsiders from driving into town to go to the bar, getting drunk, and driving home, since outsiders would lack such passes.  Temporary passes could be given for tourists staying in local hotels, that would last only for the duration of their stay.  Holders of such passes who get busted for DUI, drunk violence, drunk vandalism, or disorderly conduct would lose their passes immediately.

If enough local governments decide to do this, it would only be a matter of time before the drinking age is lowered.  Just look at Denver and Seattle, for example, who made cannabis possession the LLEP long before their respective states decided to fully legalize it.  And as they say, the rest is history.

21 Turns 30

Thirty years ago this month, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act was enacted in July 1984, which coerced the states into raising their drinking ages to 21 by 1987 or lose 10% of their federal highway funding.  While Ronald Wilson Reagan (666) was originally against such a fascist power grab, he was nonetheless  persuaded by Candy Lightner and the rest of MADD to go along with it, and of course 1984 was an election year, after all.  While some states put up a fight and challenged it in the 1987 Supreme Court case South Dakota v. Dole, they lost, and all 50 states and DC eventually capitulated by 1988.  Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands, however, decided to keep their drinking age at 18 despite the highway funding penalty, although Guam eventually raised it to 21 in 2010 as well.  And as they say, the rest is history.

So what has changed in the past three decades?  Public opinion sure has not, according to a recent study.  Americans appear to be just as prudish about the issue as they were 30 years ago, with 74% of adults being against lowering the drinking age to 18.  This is what we are up against, people.  However, other things have changed since 1984.  Alcohol-related traffic deaths are way down for a variety of reasons, such as safer cars and roads, tougher drunk driving laws, tougher enforcement, better education, and the fact that drunk driving is no longer anywhere near as socially acceptable as it once was.  Teen drinking is also at a record low as well.  While the pro-21 crowd likes to credit the 21 drinking age for these trends, that argument rings hollow considering that Canada saw similar or greater trends despite NOT raising the drinking age to 21.   Also, several studies cast doubt on the idea that raising the drinking age actually saved any lives, most notably Miron and Tetelbaum (2009), which found that any supposed lifesaving effect was essentially just a mirage all along.  But logic has never exactly been the pro-21 crowd's forte, to put it mildly.  And there is still that ever-popular moral panic about teen drinking these days, undoubtedly due in part to the idea that while young people are drinking less today than they did 30-40 years ago, apparently the more they do when they do.  Or something.  Thus, that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

So after three decades of the greatest alcohol policy failure since Prohibition, can young Americans FINALLY have their civil liberties back now?  Apparently not, according to the neo-prohibitionists.  FEH.

Have a Safe and Happy Memorial Day!

Today is Memorial Day, often known as the unofficial first day of summer and National BBQ Day.  But let's remember what it really is--a day to honor all of the men and women of the armed forces who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country.  And that of course includes all of those who died serving our country before they were legally old enough to drink.  Let us all take a moment of silence to honor them.

As for Candy Lightner, the turncoat founder of MADD who had the chutzpah and hubris to go on national TV in 2008 and publicly insult our troops, may her name and memory be forever blotted out.

And as always, arrive alive, don't drink and drive.  It's just not worth it.

Happy 5th Birthday, Twenty-One Debunked!

On May 5, 2009, Twenty-One Debunked was born as a spinoff of the True Spirit of America Party, which was founded a month prior.  During the past five years, we have fought tooth-and-nail to lower the legal drinking age to 18 in the USA.  We have presented reams of evidence showing that the 21 drinking age simply doesn't work anymore if it ever really did, and that it is the greatest alcohol policy failure since Prohibition.  And it has been an uphill battle, and one in which we must redouble our efforts if we wish to succeed.

So where do we go from here?  Aside from fighting harder, we can learn a valuable lesson from Prohibition in the 1920s.  In the years leading up to Prohibition, women overwhelmingly supported it, but by 1933, over 70% of women had turned against it, and the rest was history.   We can also observe a similar trend as cannabis prohibition comes to an end--there is even a group now called "Moms for Marijuana".  It seems to be a necessary precursor to change of that sort for women to support such a change.  Yet unfortunately there is no such trend for our movement to lower the drinking age to 18, which is really quite a "sausage fest" it seems.   The majority of women still support keeping the drinking age at 21.  And that needs to change yesterday if we are to win.

We need to get the word out about our movement to women, especially mothers.  Even those who support keeping the drinking age at 21 intuitively know on some level that it has been an abject failure, and we as a movement need to build on that intuition and take the thunder away from the neoprohibitionists like MADD.  We need to address any legitimate concerns that those on the fence may have about young adults and alcohol, and show that these concerns can be better addressed with a drinking age of 18 combined with the other components of our proposal.  And it would also be good if our movement had a mothers' organization that could act as a counterweight to MADD.  If the cannabis legalization movement can do it, so can we.

Let America be America again, and lower the drinking age to 18.  If you're old enough to go to war, you're old enough to go to the bar.  'Nuff said.

Case Closed? Not So Fast

A new study by William DeJong claims that the debate on the 21 drinking is over, and that the evidence is overwhelming that the policy saves lives and reduces teen and young adult drinking.  His literature review, titled Case Closed:  Research Evidence on the Positive Public Health Impact of the Age 21 MLDA in the United States, looks at research conducted mostly from 2006 to the present.  While on the surface DeJong's paper appears to be decently written, upon closer examination one can see several flaws that undermine his thesis.

First and foremost, his treatment of Miron and Tetelbaum's groundbreaking 2009 study (which thoroughly debunked the supposed lifesaving effect) is sorely lacking.  He literally devotes a mere two sentences to casually mentioning and blithely dismissing its results.  DeJong seems to think that the reason that the coerced states saw no significant effect while the voluntary-adopting states did was due to enforcement differences and/or cohort or other differences between the two groups of states.  That's very funny considering how Miron and Tetelbaum took great pains to control for just about every conceivable variable that would likely have a significant effect, in addition to state and year fixed effects.  Additionally, even if the handful of voluntary adopters did enforce the 21 drinking age to a greater extent, even they saw that their fairly weak lifesaving effect lasted no more than a year or two following the law change (while it actually seemed to throw gasoline on the fire in many of the coerced states).  Miron and Tetelbaum also found that the effect of raising the drinking age on high school drinking was fairly small, likely due to reporting bias, and basically confined to the voluntary-adopting states.  All of which puts a massive hole in DeJong's theory to say the least.  Strike one.

Secondly, while DeJong does talk a bit about Europe and New Zealand, he does not devote a single word to Canada.  As Twenty-One Debunked has noted repeatedly, Canada saw a similar or faster decline in alcohol-related traffic deaths as the USA despite NOT raising the drinking age to 21.  And while young Canadians do tend to drink a bit more than their American counterparts on average, the rates of "binge" drinking in Canada are roughly equivalent to the demographically and geographically similar US states that they share a border with or are otherwise fairly close to.  Canada also boasts a lower alcohol-related death rate than the USA as well as less crime and violence, and the alcoholism rates in the two countries are roughly equivalent.  That's another huge hole in his theory that cannot be easily explained away.  As for New Zealand, note that we have already debunked the fairly outdated studies that DeJong refers to.  Strike two.

But probably DeJong's biggest flaw of all is his logic or lack thereof.  He claims that the evidence to date supports the idea that not only should we not lower the drinking age, but that enforcement should be toughened.  Leaving aside all the studies that debunk the supposed benefits of the 21 drinking age, his logic is based on shaky ground.  He takes various outdated correlations and presumes them to be causation, he blithely dismisses any evidence to the contrary, and essentially denies that there is any good alternative policy aside from tougher enforcement.  Which is very funny considering how much research (including some of DeJong's own previous research) finds that social norms marketing techniques are at least as effective in reducing high-risk drinking among college students as tougher drinking age enforcement is.  Strike three, yer out!

Unfortunately, DeJong does appear to be right about one thing.  The movement to lower the drinking age to 18 has been losing a great deal of momentum over the past few years, and since about 2011 is now essentially on the back burner once again compared to other, more pressing issues like the economy and of course cannabis legalization.  Scratch that, the movement is now on life support, and the coroner is just waiting to be called.  So we need to redouble our efforts, like yesterday.  And let's hope that DeJong's declaring the debate to be over actually has the opposite effect and re-ignites the drinking age debate once again.  Now let's get to work!

Let America be America again, and lower the drinking age to 18.  If you're old enough to go to war, you're old enough to go to the bar.  'Nuff said.

FebFast is Here

Similar to last year's 40-Day Challenge, Twenty-One Debunked is participating in the fairly new Australian tradition of FebFast.  To wit, it involves no drinking at all during the entire 28 days of February.  Or one can choose the "half-arsed" option, and go a mere two weeks without drinking.  Just about any drinker would benefit from a good detox period, and the benefits include improved health and energy, a better bank balance, and a better quality of life overall.  As the FebFast folks would say, it's just the tonic for you.

If you have read a previous version of this post, please disregard the second paragraph.  The idea outlined therein was admittedly silly and kind of takes away from the overall mission of Twenty-One Debunked.  I'm sure that anyone who wants to see a cached version will just Google it anyway, but remember that it is no longer the case, and we apologize for such inane logorrhea (i.e. diarrhea of the mouth or keyboard).

What About Weed? (Part Deux)

With the recent legalization of recreational cannabis (for those over 21) in Colorado and Washington, and likely at least a few more states to follow, we at Twenty-One Debunked feel the need to update and clarify our official stance on the cannabis issue.  Previously, Twenty-One Debunked has been officially neutral on the issue of cannabis legalization, with our only position being that if and when it becomes legal, the age limit should be 18 instead of 21.  In the meantime, our affiliated political party, the True Spirit of America Party (TSAP), has always been 100% in favor of legalization.  However, after careful evaluation and deliberation, as of January 2014 Twenty-One Debunked has decided to take up the cause of cannabis legalization as well, albeit as a lower-priority issue relative to our main cause of lowering the drinking age to 18.   Our new stance on cannabis can be delineated as follows:

• Cannabis should be legal for everyone 18 and older, period.
• No one of any age should be arrested, jailed, or given a criminal record for simple possession or use of cannabis.
• Passing around a joint or bong should not be treated any differently than passing around a tobacco cigarette or a bottle of beer.
• While not completely safe for everyone, cannabis is a safer alternative to alcohol by just about any objective scientific measure, and as harm-reductionists we need to get the word out about that fact.
• While driving under the influence of cannabis can be dangerous and should remain illegal, drunk driving is much worse, and the penalties should reflect that fact.
• As with alcohol, blood THC limits for driving should be based on science, not zero-tolerance.

Thus, our new position is identical to the TSAP's longstanding view on the matter, and our creed applies equally to alcohol and cannabis.  As for legalization in states with an age limit of 21, pragmatism unfortunately forces us to part ways with people like Mike Males in that regard.  It would be foolish of us to make the perfect the enemy of the good, and thus we will grudgingly support legalization initiatives with a 21 age limit if that is what it takes to get such initiatives to pass.  There will always be time to lower the age limit to 18 when the dust settles and people begin to realize that cannabis is nowhere near as scary as the drug warriors want us to think.

To all the prohibitionists and drug warriors out there, we have one question for you:  How does it feel to be on the wrong side of history?  Because we wouldn't know anything about that.

Should Bars Set Their Own Drinking Ages?

In response to the latest news about a NYC bar setting a minimum age of 25 for patrons, we at Twenty-One Debunked realize that we haven't been all that clear about whether bars should be allowed to discriminate based on age.  And it's perfectly legal too, believe it or not.  We have mixed feelings about the issue overall, and if the founder of Twenty-One Debunked ever owned a bar, he would not set the age limit any higher than the legal drinking age (whatever it may be at the time).  In principle, it is ageist to do so, and it is far better to crack down on all troublemakers regardless of age and put better safeguards in place for everyone.

However, there are some fairly strong arguments in favor of allowing bars to set a higher age, particularly if the legal drinking age is lowered to 18.  First, it is worth noting in that some countries with a drinking age of 18, such as Sweden, several bars (and especially nightclubs) set an age limit of 20, 23, or even 30 in some cases.  Puerto Rico, with a drinking age of 18, has bars that are 21 to enter as well.  Also, there is anecdotal evidence that when many states lowered the drinking age to 18 in the 1970s, at least some bars lost business (and even went out of business) due to the supposedly rowdy 18-20 year olds flooding the bars and scaring off the older patrons.  The irony of the Brooklyn bar was that the age was raised to 25 because the 21-24 year olds were apparently the ones causing too much trouble, so it seems that raising the legal drinking age to 21 just shifted the problems to a slightly older age group.  Finally, there's the free market argument that private businesses should be allowed to do as they please, within reason of course.  While none of these arguments by themselves are strong enough, when put together they make a rather compelling case in favor of allowing bars to remain free to choose their own minimum ages.  And most importantly, if bars are allowed such freedom, they would be much more likely to get on board with our movement to lower the drinking age since they would not feel "forced" to accomodate "rowdy teenagers" if they don't want to.  So there's a strong argument from practicality as well.

Thus, while Twenty-One Debunked believes that the legal drinking age should be lowered to 18, we feel that individual bars should be allowed to choose a higher minimum age if they wish.  And if they did, it would be more likely to be 21 rather than 25, since 21-24 year olds would likely be a lot mellower if they grew up under a drinking age of 18 than if they grew up under the status quo.

Happy Drink Nothing Day!

You have probably heard of Buy Nothing Day. Celebrated on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the biggest shopping day of the year, this self-explanatory holiday is meant to be a protest against consumerism. But perhaps you didn't know that the biggest drinking day of the year is the day before Thanksgiving. That's right, it's not New Year's Eve, but Thanksgiving Eve, also known as "Blackout Wednesday."

Thus, three years ago we at Twenty-One Debunked have decided to create our own protest holiday, Drink Nothing Day. It is designed as a way for people 21 and over to show solidarity with those under 21 by not drinking any alcohol that day. To observe this holiday, which can only logically be done by folks over 21, one must not drink any form of alcohol at all during the entire 24 hours of that date, as well as the following day until sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner (or until the sun goes down, whichever occurs earlier). Then, one may drink, but one must give thanks that prohibition no longer applies to him or her. Other ways to observe include wearing two black armbands: one to symbolize those soldiers who died before being able to drink legally in the very country they served, and another to symbolize those under 21 who were killed by a drunk driver over 21.

We will continue to observe this holiday until the drinking age is lowered to 18 in all 50 states.  And remember, whether you choose to observe it or not, never drink and drive.  If you plan to drink, don't drive, and if you plan to drive, don't drink.  It's just not worth the risk.

NYC Raises Tobacco Purchase Age to 21

Much to our chagrin, Mayor Bloomberg has finally signed the bill that would raise the tobacco purchase age to 21 in New York City.  He was originally against such a move in 2006, but the City Council finally convinced him, which was really not that difficult to do considering his history as a jerk and a nanny-stater.

The bill, which bans the sale of tobacco products and e-cigarettes (but not paraphernalia) to anyone under 21, takes effect in 180 days from today, which will be on May 19, 2014.  NYC Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio will be in power then, and it remains to be seen how he will handle such a law.  We hope he will listen to reason and repeal it before it goes into effect.

As we have previously noted unequivocally while the issue was first being discussed, Twenty-One Debunked does NOT support raising the age limit for cigarettes to 21.  The one bright spot to the new law is that, unlike with alcohol, it does not apply to possession or use of tobacco (currently no age limit), or to the sale of paraphernalia (which will remain 18).  However, that does not make it any less ageist, and it will only expand the city's already extensive black market for untaxed/out-of-state/stolen/counterfeit cigarettes.  What allegedly works in the small town of Needham, MA (which is debatable) would be unlikely to work in a place like NYC.  While another bill was passed today to increase penalties for black-market sellers, it does not get to the root of the problem:  extremely high cigarette taxes compared to surrounding areas.  And the 21 age limit only pours gasoline on the fire.  I would bet that cigarette retailers in Westchester County (where the age is 18) and Long Island and New Jersey (where it's 19) would probably be the greatest beneficiaries of the new law, in addition to the mobsters and terrorists that profit from the black market in the city.

As a result, Twenty-One Debunked is calling for an all-ages boycott of all tobacco products in the five boroughs of NYC, beginning on May 19, 2014 when the law takes effect (and lasting until repeal).  If you live in the city and smoke, be sure to (legally) buy your smokes elsewhere--or better yet, quit.  Tourists should also avoid buying tobacco while visiting.  The more die-hard boycotters might even want to include alcohol on the do-not-buy list, for obvious reasons.  Watch the tax revenue shrink precipitously.

For this and many other reasons, we hereby say "good riddance" to lame-duck Nanny Bloomberg when he finally steps down on New Year's Eve.  Don't let the door hit you on the way out.