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?

Would A Graduated Drinking Age Be Better? (Part Deux)

In our previous post, we discussed the idea of possibly having a split (graduated) drinking age for the first few years of lowering the drinking age, whether for quantity limits, beverage type, or both.  And we concluded that we would be open to that, but ONLY if that would eventually sunset to make it 18 across the board within a few years at most.  Remember, our goal at Twenty-One Debunked remains to fully lower it to 18, and not a day later.

Another idea could be to lower it completely to 18 for on-premise purchases (bars and restaurants), while requiring anyone 18-20 buying alcohol at stores for off-premise consumption to simply have someone 21 or older with them for the purchase, except if those 18-20 have and present a college or military ID.  And they could not have anyone under 18 with them (except their own children) either.  That would be more than enough to discourage 18-20 year olds from buying for their younger friends, which of course would still remain just as illegal as it is now.  

And of course, 18-20 year olds should be fully allowed to drink, possess, and be furnished alcohol in private as well, just like people over 21 currently are.  That would be head and shoulders better than ONLY allowing them to possess and consume alcohol on premise, a truly half-baked idea which would thus create a perverse incentive to drive under the influence, especially in rural areas where such a policy would be tantamount to legalized entrapment in practice.

What about the fear of "blood borders" between states that lower their drinking ages while adjacent states remain 21?  Well, first of all, that is really no worse than the problem of dry counties adjacent to wet counties in terms of perverse incentives to drive under the influence.  (And we sure as hell don't blame it on the wet counties!)  Secondly, they could always have it be where on premise establishments less than X number of miles from the state line of such adjacent states would not be allowed to accept out of state IDs for people under 21 from those specific states, except in college towns for those who also show a college ID.  And the same "temporary residence" exception should also apply to hotels serving their overnight guests as well.  There is a precedent for Wisconsin (a state that has experimented with just about every possible alcohol policy under the sun) doing something similar before 1977 when it was rescinded.

Another "novel" idea:  simply enforce existing laws against actual drunk driving better.  Checkpoints and/or roving patrols can really go a long way yo reduce the problem.

But should we even bother to start out with a compromised position at all?  That remains an open question.

The pro-21 crowd really lives in an alternate reality, it seems.  Just recently, I was debating someone on Reddit that kept on fruitlessly picking apart the methodology of Miron and Tetelbaum's groundbreaking 2009 study that thoroughly debunked the idea that the 21 drinking age saved lives.  The person I debated with kept on straining at proverbial gnats and swallowing proverbial camels, tossing red herrings, using the word "weird" repeatedly for anything they disagreed with, and kept failing to actually refute it.  The pro-21 crowd really cannot to see the forest for the trees, it seems.  They are apparently way too left-brained to do so (and perhaps smooth-brained as well).

The point being:  trying to reason with them is fundamentally an exercise in futility.  And compromising with them would also likely be just as futile as well.

Would A Graduated Drinking Age Be Better?

Twenty-One Debunked has long called for the drinking age to be lowered to 18, completely, and yesterday is not soon enough.  And that hasn't changed one iota since our founding in 2009, and it never will.  That's our North Star.

But what about a phase-in period to make the age lowering more likely to get passed at all?  We have already proposed for the first few years of the new law, to have it remain at 21 for kegs, cases, handles (large bottles) of liquor, and other bulk quantities, while otherwise lowering it to 18 yesterday, and having the higher age limit automatically sunset after X number of years (likely three to five years).  And also, keep the zero tolerance age at 21 for drinking and driving as well for the first few years.  The question remains, however:  what if that still is not enough to realistically get it passed?  We face an extremely uphill battle these days, after all.

Thus, we at Twenty-One Debunked would now grudgingly support, and ONLY for the first few years at most, also keeping the purchase age at 21 for the first few years for hard liquor, or really anything with more than 18% alcohol by volume.  Everything else in non-bulk quantities would be lowered to 18 right away, while the higher age limit would automatically sunset to 18 within a few years.  The higher age limit would not apply to drinking the liquor, of course, only for the specific act of buying it.

Alternatively, the higher age limit can be phased down gradually to 20, then 19, then 18 as well.

The higher age limit could also be kept for all internet, phone, or delivery app orders of alcohol for the first few years as well, and also perhaps have shorter trading hours allowed for off-premise sales for those below that age.

All of this would pour cold water over any real or imagined fears of a short-term increase alcohol-related problems and casualties among teens and young adults, particularly those involving high school students and keggers.  (Longer-term problems and casualties resulting from a lower drinking age have already been thoroughly debunked by Miron and Tetelbaum (2009) and several other studies, of course.)

Hey, if it actually gets us to our real goal sooner than being absolute purists about it would, why not?  Especially in light of the fact that there are more and more places (coffee shops, movie theaters, etc.) these days that serve beer, wine, cider, and/or alcopops, but not hard liquor.  That said, we will NOT support any further compromises beyond that, as that would be a compromise OF a compromise, and thus that would ultimately vitiate our goal of lowering to 18.

So what are we waiting for?

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!

Why Do Small Alcohol Tax/Price Hikes Have Such Large Effects On Drunk Driving Casualties?

We have noted before how alcohol tax (and thus price) hikes have been proven time and again to save lives, whether from traffic deaths, other accidental deaths, violent deaths, as well as deaths from more direct alcohol-related conditions such as alcoholic liver disease.  The question remains, why such relatively small differences in price have such relatively large effects, that can sometimes even be large enough to strain the reader's credulity?

For things like liver cirrhosis, the answer is pretty straightforward:  cirrhosis is chronic and cumulative, but it is also progressive as well.  At any given time, some unknown number of people (and unknown to the people themselves as well) may be just one binge away from near-certain death.  And for them, even a very modest near-term reduction in drinking due to a price hike (which to a very heavy drinker, is not trivial, since they spend so much on alcohol) can very well save their life.

But what about less direct things like drunk driving casualties?  Well, one needs to think like an economist, that is, on the margin.  It is the last drink of any given drinking session that determines one's final BAC of the session, and it is the final BAC that determines how impaired one is in the event of driving home.  And we know that the fatal or serious crash risk rises exponentially with BAC, thus even a modest reduction (say, one fewer drink per session) would dramatically reduce the risk of such casualties, even though the risk still remains significantly elevated compared to not drinking at all before driving.  At on-premise locations like bars, a tax hike is likely to be passed through at a rate greater than one-to-one due to rounding up, so it is very plausible that at least some people will have one fewer drink per session as a result.  Or alternatively, they may drink before going out to save money, but that would make them more likely to plan ahead and not drive there, so they would be even less likely to drive back home as a result. 

Either way, the fairly recent examples of Illinois and Maryland seeing sizeable reductions in traffic deaths after relatively modest alcohol tax hikes in 2009 and 2011, respectively, definitely supports this hypothesis.  And it shows that this classic "tax-price-consumption-fatalities" relationship is still as relevant as ever now in the 21st century, even if it has been attenuated a bit since the 1980s.  And most of the gazillion studies on the matter have found that the effect is larger than that of the meretricious "crown jewel" of the neo-prohibitionist public health fascists and ageist bigots, namely the 21 drinking age, with the supposed lifesaving effect of the latter being most likely spurious, inconsequential, or even perverse in the long run.

In other words, it's really a no-brainer to raise alcohol taxes, yesterday.  Especially with alcohol being so dangerously cheap right now in America.  So what are we waiting for?

Sorry, Cannabis Legalization STILL NOT Crazy-Making, Or Deadly For That Matter

The latest fearmongering "Reefer Madness" study is making the rounds now.  This one insinuates (with the requisite hedging of language, of course) that cannabis legalization in Canada might have been linked to an increase in schizophrenia and other psychosis.  But the study doesn't actually say that at all.  A more careful reading of the study reveals that the incidence of schizophrenia proper has NOT actually increased overall following legalization.  Nor does the study actually show that the prevalence or incidence of psychosis in general has increased either (only the vague nebulous category of "psychosis not otherwise specified (NOS)" increased somewhat, and other psychosis diagnoses were not even looked at) for some reason. Natch.

The authors do concede that previous studies on both the USA and Canada have also repeatedly failed to find any significant link between medical or recreational legalization and either schizophrenia or psychosis in general.  But they laughably claim that such studies were too "underpowered" to detect anything.  Riiiiiight.  Perhaps because the supposed effect they were looking for was just noise all along?  

Occam's Razor, anyone?  Point is, if you torture the data enough, they will confess to anything.  And of course, one of the authors disclosed that they personally have ties to (surprise, surprise!) the pharmaceutical industry.

In other news, around the same time that was published, another Canadian study was published in the same journal that found that those who had emergency room visits or hospitalizations listed as related to "cannabis use disorder" were statistically more likely to die in the five years following such admissions.  That study made for some scary news headlines as well, but not only are such patients not even remotely representative of typical cannabis users, but as the requisite linguistic hedging reveals, no definitive casual link could be proven here either.  That is, it was impossible to rule out all alternative explanations even after attempting to adjust for known confounding factors.  

And regardless, clearly this study says nothing at all about legalization.  If weed legalization had somehow resulted in excess deaths in the general population, it certainly would have been all over the news, but it apparently didn't.

It seems like the standards for what gets published in medical and scientific journals these days are really approaching (if not already hitting) rock bottom.  When silly junk science (or approaching junk science) studies like these come out, the very best thing that we can do is to mercilessly mock them as far and wide as humanly possible.

Thomas Jefferson Predicted Exactly Why Minimum Unit Pricing Would Fail

Looks like good old Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States and one of America's Founding Fathers, had uncannily predicted long ago why the recent "Minimum Unit Pricing" of alcoholic beverages in Scotland and Wales would end up failing so miserably even on its own terms:

"No nation is drunken where wine is cheap; and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent [i.e. distilled] spirits as the common beverage. It is, in truth, the only antidote to the bane of whiskey."

And there you have it.  Substitute "beer" or "cider" for "wine" and it still makes just as much if not more sense, especially in the UK.  That is NOT to say that the price mechanism (via taxation or otherwise) is useless, far from it.  All else being equal, we know that higher alcohol prices = fewer alcohol-related problems and deaths, at least to a point.  But the Jeffersonian wisdom above DOES add a VERY important nuance, namely that the RELATIVE price of less-concentrated alcoholic beverages (beer, wine, cider) compared with the more-concentrated distilled spirits (hard liquor) is more important than the absolute prices of either.

Consider this:  the UK as a whole already had, and still has, fairly high but (until recently) very uneven taxes on alcohol to begin with.  Wine and especially cider have long enjoyed lower taxes (and thus lower prices per standard drink) compared with beer and hard liquor there.  Thus, the heaviest problem drinkers, especially poorer ones, often went for cheap and strong cider to get the most "bang for the buck".  Enter minimum unit pricing, a price floor across the board per standard drink which had a much larger effect on raising the price of cider compared with hard liquor.  The unintended consequence?  At least some of the heaviest drinkers likely at least partially switched to liquor as a result, and ended up getting drunker than they otherwise would, with predictable negative effects.

That said, in the USA where alcohol taxes are much lower, especially for distilled spirits, such a price floor may very well be a net benefit overall.  And even in the UK, changing it to a two-tier price floor where distilled spirits would have a higher minimum price per standard drink than non-distilled beverages may very well too.  But as it stands currently in Scotland and Wales?  It's generally pretty weak sauce at best as far as public health is considered.

Oh, and don't ever expect MADD to admit this either.  They have in the past at least half-heartedly called for higher beer taxes, of course, but remained strangely quiet about liquor taxes.  It's almost like someone is greasing their palms, or something.  Nah, that's crazy conspiracy talk, right?

Will There Be Nicotine Limits for Cigarettes?

Lately, there has been some talk of the outgoing Biden administration possibly doing an eleventh-hour Hail Mary, and officially propose a hard limit on nicotine levels in combustible cigarettes.  If done properly, this would make cigarettes less addictive or even non-addictive, and would be a major win for public health.  A randomized controlled trial of reduced nicotine versus full nicotine cigarettes in 2015 appears to back up that claim quite well.

Twenty-One Debunked is officially on the fence about this idea, cautiously supporting it in principle while also being wary of potential unintended consequences as far as creating a black market for full nicotine cigarettes.  If they do it, they would have to phase out the full nicotine cigarettes gradually, and also leave alone non-combustible alternative tobacco/nicotine products (except for capping the nicotine levels in vapes to European levels, which we support).  And even loose roll-your-own and pipe tobacco should be spared, as those are not the main drivers of the tobacco smoking epidemic.  Only ready-made combustible cigarettes and little cigars should be affected in our view.

Failing that, here is a "Cliffs Notes" style list on how to make cigarettes and other smokeable tobacco products less addictive and appealing WITHOUT banning it outright or nicotine below natural levels:

• First and foremost, BAN ADDITIVES!  No non-tobacco ingredients should be added, period.
• Adding extra nicotine deliberately should also be banned as well.
• Require the smoke pH to be 8 or higher to discourage deep inhalation of smoke, as it naturally was prior to the 20th century. 
• Phase out the pH-lowering and environmentally unsustainable practice of flue-curing tobacco. 
• Phase out cigarette "filters", which don't really filter, and merely provide a false sense of security to smokers, and inherently creates a major toxic waste littering problem to boot.

If they still want to reduce maximum nicotine levels to a non-addictive level in ready-made commercial cigarettes and little cigars, go right ahead.  But it would be best to do the other things on the list first.

(And of course, Twenty-One Debunked continues to strongly opposed the current age limit of 21, and believes it should be lowered back to 18 yesterday.)

Also, banning the use of radioactive (!) phosphate fertilizers to grow tobacco is really a textbook no-brainer in terms of tobacco harm reduction. 

Additionally, requiring all tobacco products to be sold only in dedicated tobacco stores, or other places where you have to be 18 or older to enter, would really not be a bad idea either.  It would certainly make it less ubiquitous, convenient, and tempting without the constant reminder in grocery stores, convenience stores, gas stations, pharmacies, etc.  Even then, to avoid unintended consequences to such stores, that should be phased out gradually as well.

So what are we waiting for?

What Will 2025 Bring for Youth Rights?

It's 2025 now, and things look pretty bleak for youth rights in general.  Not only is the 21 drinking age (and smoking age and toking age) not going away anytime soon, but now we have to deal with the latest social media bans and restrictions on young people.  Florida's literally goes into effect today, for example.  This law bans anyone under 14 from signing up for or maintaining a social media account at all, and for anyone over 14 but under 16 from doing so without verified parental consent.  How they plan to do it without it backfiring on older youth and adults is not clear, but either way, it is very wrong-headed at best.  And we know it won't stop there, as it won't be long before it gets raised to 18 and then 19 and then 21 and so on.  That is, slopes are MUCH, MUCH slipperier than they appear!

Fortunately, it is being challenged in court, and pending the outcome of such challenges, enforcement is unlikely to begin until at least February at the earliest.

And then of course we have Trump coming back into the office of POTUS for a second term on January 20th.  That alone will be a new dark age for America, especially with his puppet master Elon Muskrat pulling his strings.  Trump has not exactly been a friend of youth rights, as evident in his raising the federal smoking age to 21 in late 2019.  Just like DeSanctimonious did the same for Florida in 2021, after initially opposing it.  And of course, Trump and MAGA Republicans and Talibangelicals seeking to systematically revoke women's rights will of course not bode well for youth rights either, if history is any indication.

So buckle up, as it will be a VERY wild ride!

Have A Safe And Happy Holiday Season

(This is a public service announcement)

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, pretty much back to normal now.  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 simply don't drink--nobody's got a gun to your head.  Seriously, don't be stupid about it!  And the same goes for other psychoactive substances as well, and a fortiori when combined with alcohol.

ARRIVE ALIVE, DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE!!!   If you plan to drink, don't forget to think!  The life you save may very well be your own.

Australia Has Fallen

Or, "Et Tu, Australia?"

Australia recently passed a sweeping new law setting a binding legal age limit of 16 for at least most social media.  It will take full effect in one year from its passage.  And aside from their notably illiberal and draconian measures during the Covid pandemic (and the fact that they were of course descended from a penal colony), this kind of thing is quite out of character to say the least for a country that has long prided itself on being relatively free-spirited and is quite famous for the saying and attitude of "no worries, mate". 

Mike Males wrote an excellent Substack article from a youth rights perspective, discussing just how wrong and harmful it is for the state to do that to young people.  And we at Twenty-One Debunked agree with him.  But even if you the reader don't agree with him, and are smug about this law perhaps appeasing the illiberal and ageist social-mediaphobes in charge, consider this: it will NOT stop there.  Mark my words, the moment they see that their voodoo didn't really work, they will triple down and expand the restrictions, tighten the age verification requirements, and/or keep increasing the age limit higher and higher.  And this will also backfire on adults as well, endangering everyone's civil rights way beyond anonymity, given the privacy and cybersecurity pitfalls inherent to ALL forms of online age verification that would be even modestly effective. 

What should be done instead is what we have long advocated, as has the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):  a "Privacy First" approach, that is, comprehensive data privacy legislation for ALL ages, which, at a minimum, bans surveillance advertising as well as "dark patterns" and other similarly deceptive and ethically questionable practices.  That will throw the proverbial One Ring into the fire for good.  But of course, Big Tech would NOT like that.

Also, simply adding more "friction" would also make such platforms safer and less addictive overall.

So what are we waiting for?

P.S. Australia has never had any equivalent to America's Section 230, so the fact that they saw the need to "get tough" on social media companies implies that they had just as much of a problem as the USA.  Thus, outright repeal of Section 230 (as opposed to much more nuanced and narrow reforms in regards to personalization of feeds and algorithms) as some ignorant social-mediaphobes have suggested would solve absolutely nothing, and would do far more harm than good. Don't do it!  You have been warned.

UPDATE:  Pari Esfandiari also wrote a great essay about how such a ban will do more harm than good.

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) 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.

Blowing Hot And Cold (Cognition)

In psychology, the concept of "hot and cold cognition" has gained much currency in recent years.  "Cold cognition" is thinking while NOT being swayed by strong emotions, time pressure, and/or peer pressure, while "hot cognition" is thinking when one IS thus potentially swayed in the "heat of the moment".

In what passes for pop neuroscience these days, it has become in vogue to claim that while cold cognition fully matures by around age 16 or so, hot cognition takes much longer, often well into the mid to late 20s.  A major proponent of this theory is Laurence Steinberg, who has written extensively on the topic.  One major study by Steinberg et al. can be found here, which compares various ages in various countries on several hot and cold cognitive tests.  (What the authors call "psychosocial maturity" is a synonym for "hot cognition".) And while such a pattern was apparently seen to some extent in the aggregate, when you break it down by country, the pattern breaks down as well.  And the weak results cannot be explained away by individualism vs collectivism, rich vs poor, Global North vs Global South, eastern vs western, or any other obvious societal characteristics.  And notably, the USA was an outlier where instead of hot cognition improving steadily and largely linearly to (and likely beyond) age 30 like most other countries, it began to level off in the early to mid 20s and plateaued from then onwards.  And one of the other countries actually saw a regress (oops!) in hot cognition in the mid to late 20s.  Cold cognition, on the other hand, was generally much more consistent by country, and nearly always leveled off around 16.

It's almost like hot cognition is actually a skill where "practice makes good enough", as opposed to "biology is destiny".  There is far too wide a variation between individuals and societies to seriously argue otherwise.  And even a quick and cursory observation will reveal that most older adults aren't really all that great at it in the real world.  All the more reason to call BS on any claim that young people's civil rights be curtailed in the name of specious junk neuroscience.

As for the tempting idea that the juvenile injustice system (or a third category) thus be expanded to include young adults (ages 18-25 or so), or otherwise going easier on young adults, please allow me to channel the late criminologist James Q. Wilson.  He noted that even if disadvantaged demographics have a "steeper hill to climb" in terms of staying out of trouble, the prospect of punishment actually has greater utility for them to make it easier for them to climb that proverbial hill.  To that I would add, of course, as long as they are not completely incompetent, and it is in the interest of justice to do so.  And treating young adults as non-adults for that purpose is ultimately a trap, a velvet glove to the iron fist of revoking their hard-won civil rights as well.

That said, it is certainly the very height of hypocrisy to try and punish young people of any age as adults when they commit "status offenses" based entirely on age like underage drinking or smoking, curfew violations, and stuff like that which would not be crimes when adults do these things.  All such "status offenses" thus need to be either decriminalized or removed from the law books entirely, just like victimless crimes (or what the late, great Peter McWilliams called "consensual crimes") more generally.  Ageists really cannot have it both ways!

And finally, people of ALL ages really need to use their cold cognition to plan ahead better, to avoid the pitfalls of relying solely on hot cognition in potentially dangerous situations.  We ignore that at our peril.

Tobacco 21 Laws' Benefits Are An Illusion

Another recent study found that while self-reported teen smoking and vaping rates declined after Tobacco 21 laws, biomarker exposure showed mixed evidence at best, implying that fewer young smokers are identifying as smokers (and similar findings for vaping).  Thus, the supposed reductions in smoking and vaping in surveys and sales data are at least largely an artifact of underreporting and cross-border shopping rather than real reductions.  Oops!

Looks like it was all just another mirage, kinda like with the 21 drinking age.  What next, a study that finds that water is wet and the sun rises in the east?

Excellent New Insights From Renowned Sociologist and Youth Rights Activist Mike Males

The renowned sociologist and youth rights activist Mike Males has some excellent new Substack articles debunking the latest moral panic about young people, smartphones and social media.  As we stand at a crossroads in terms of how public policy is evolving (or devolving), his words should be food for thought for any direct or indirect policymaker as well as anyone going to the polls this November. 

And here is what I added in the comments:

Honestly, I would be fine with making schools phone-free IF AND ONLY IF they alao applied the same rules to teachers, staff, and administrators. Fair is fair. After all, they wouldn't want to be flaming hypocrites about it, right? (But we all know these zealots would probably rather drink Drano than apply their double standards to themselves, of course.)

Excellent work, Mike. I would also add about the ageist abomination that is 21 drinking age, the greatest alcohol policy failure since Prohibition, that Miron and Tetelbaum (2009) also further debunked any claim of a lifesaving effect. The supposed lifesaving effect was all a mirage driven by a handful of early-adopoting states, while for the federal coerced states it was inconsequential at best or even perverse. And notably, counterintuitive as it may be, in that study not even the graduated 18/21 age limits for beer/wine vs hard liquor in some states were vindicated either (those states were disproportionately likely to be coerced late-adopters) as any better than a straight age limit of 18. So any age limit higher than 18 was a net loser in the long run, even for the early adopters whose supposed lifesaving effects evaporated after the first year or two. Oops!

Is Drunk Walking Really More Dangerous Than Drunk Driving?

Or, "Why People Absolutely Need to Stop Citing Superfreaknomics, Yesterday"

Talk about losing the plot!

Only someone who has repeatedly read Superfreakonomics would really believe that.  (People are apparently still irresponsibly citing it to this day.)  In that rather tepid and disappointing sequel to Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner, the authors claimed that, at least on a per-mile basis, a drunk person is a whopping eight times more likely (!) to be killed while walking than driving the same distance.  However, there are a number of flaws to that claim.  First, they assume that the proportion of total miles traveled while drunk is the same for walking as it is for driving.  This is dubious because drunk driving is far less common nowadays, and many who would have driven drunk a generation ago now choose to walk instead.  Secondly, it is more realistic to compare the risk per hour of traveling time rather than per mile, since far more miles are traveled by car rather than on foot.  Thirdly, the real-world relative risk for an alcohol-related pedestrian fatality does not rise to statistically significant levels until a BAC of about 0.15, while for driving deaths it begins to rise significantly at 0.05 or even lower, which is a very large difference.  To quote NHTSA in their Alcohol and Highway Safety 2001 report:

One interesting finding...was that the relative risk of involvement in a fatal pedestrian crash did not begin to rise until the pedestrians reached a BAC of .15 to .20. This is consistent with the hypothesis that safe walking is generally easier than safe driving, since the relative risk curve for fatal motor vehicle crashes starts to rise at a much lower BAC.

Finally, there is a significant qualitative difference between the two in that while a drunk pedestrian is unlikely to endanger innocent people, a drunk driver is very likely to do so.  That's precisely why the latter is illegal while the former is generally not, though some states do have laws against public drunkenness (which are typically only enforced if the drunk pedestrian is noticeably causing a nuisance or hazard to others).  We may never be able to determine exactly how risky drunk walking is to the drunk individual, and we certainly know that the risk is not zero.  In fact, the NHTSA report suggests that it can be quite significant at very high doses of alcohol.  There is also a risk of falls when one is "falling-down drunk," which can lead to serious or even fatal injuries.  But all things considered, drunk walking is still a better option than drunk driving at any BAC level. (Not that we are encouraging either!)

In other words, if you choose to harm or endanger yourself, that's your own business in a free society.  But the moment you significantly harm or endanger non-consenting others, such as driving under the influence on a public street or highway, it then becomes everyone's business.  Why is that still so hard for so many people to understand?

Never mind, we already know why.  Because too many people are apparently far too left-brain dominant to see the forest for the trees!  And the very same people who, upon reading or hearing about that questionable passage from Superfreakonomics, will inevitably see such specious reasoning as far more of a green light to drive drunk than as a red light to walk drunk.  Now I don't believe in censorship, but come on now:  if I was the editor of Superfreakonomics, I could see myself "accidentally" deleting that particular part of the book before it got published!

And finally, research has found that the best ways to reduce the number of drunk pedestrian casualties at the population level are basically the same strategies that would benefit all pedestrians (and cyclists) drunk or sober, most notably reducing speed limits and vehicle sizes, and otherwise improving infrastructure to be more pedestrian-friendly and bike-friendly in general.  We also need to crack down on and stiffen the penalties for hit-and-run crashes and distracted driving as well.  Anything else, in our view, is an Orwellian slippery slope just waiting to happen.

(Mic drop)

How America Lost The Plot

From the ageist and illiberal abomination that is the 21 drinking age and especially its authoritarian enforcement, to drunk driving, to drug policy, to transportation policy, to environmental policy, to foreign policy, to Tobacco 21, and so on, America has well and truly lost the plot long ago on so many issues.  How long ago, you may ask?  Well, roughly 40 years ago, if not even a bit earlier than that.  But how and why did it happen in the first place?  Why can't our "leaders" (and many of those who keep voting for them) ever seem to see the forest for the trees?

In the book, The Master and His Emissary:  The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist (2009), the author delves into the familiar idea of the left vs right hemispheres of the brain.  Only unlike the usual surface-level analysis in that we see in pop neuroscience, this one is a real deep dive into the truly resounding implications of these brain differences for society and civilization.  Ten years later, it was even made into a documentary, The Divided Brain (2019), by McGilchrist himself along with award-winning documentary filmmaker Vanessa Dylyn, et al.

To summarize:  the two hemispheres of the brain each see the world and process information in fundamentally different ways:  the left brain is more reductionistic in thinking, while the right is more holistic in thinking.  The left is more logical, analytical and detail-oriented, while the right is more creative, intuitive, and sees the bigger picture.  The left is more linear, while the right is more non-linear.  The left sees the map, while the right sees the territory.  And so on.  While both sides are of course quite valuable and necessary, the brain functions best overall when the right brain is in charge.  The left is a great servant, but a terrible master, hence the title of the book.  And Western culture has, for thousands of years, oscillated between favoring the overall relative dominance of each of the two hemispheres.  In recent centuries and decades, as in some other historical periods as well, we have become far too left-brain dominant, with very negative consequences, according to the author.  Not only does the left not really know what the right is doing, but at least half the time the left doesn't even know what the left is doing!  The left brain has thus essentially hijacked society, and that in turn leaves us "increasingly incapable of grappling with critical economic, environmental, and social issues, ones that shape our very future as a species", as the documentary would put it.  I am largely oversimplifying what he said, of course, but that is the basic gist of it overall.

One obvious reason for this excessive left-brain dominance could be due to poorly-designed education, of course.  But another could be that the left brain is faster in terms of processing speed than the right, and the pace of life is undoubtedly much, much faster nowadays than even the recent past.  Though the latter would be more of a chicken-or-the egg question. 

(And to all of the political conservatives and reactionaries who try in vain to shoehorn all of this into their silly left-wing vs right-wing political spectrum, like that one guy on The Daily Sceptic did recently, please get your own ideas.  This book, by a renowned Oxford scholar, truly thoroughly transcends such a naive interpretation of politics.)

A-ha!  That really explains a LOT!

Clearly, the USA (and a good chunk of the world as well, but especially the USA), has only gotten more, not less, left-brain dominant since roughly 40 years ago.  We as a society have been reactively lurching from crisis to crisis, moral panic to moral panic, trend to trend, fad to fad, idol to idol, and propaganda to propaganda, throwing at each whatever left-brained nostrums seem like a good idea at the time without really thinking it through.  But try as they may, the map is NOT the territory.  And their reductionist "solutions" invariably affect not just this thing over here, but also that thing over there, and that other thing all the way over there, and so on.  Oops!

One thing's for sure:  As the late, great Buckminster Fuller famously said, you cannot solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that got us into that problem in the first place.  Unfortunately, not nearly enough people have gotten the memo, it seems.

UPDATE:  Looks like McGilchrist has a sequel to the aforementioned book, titled The Matter with Things, as well.  Food for thought. 

A brain divided against itself cannot stand.

Case Closed: Tobacco 21 Laws Don't Work

The latest study of Tobacco 21 laws shows they were a resounding....DUD in terms or reducing young adult smoking, vaping, or smokeless tobacco use rates in the USA.  Being published in a famously anti-tobacco journal, Tobacco Control, the authors of course wanted to put a positive spin on it though nonetheless, as shown below (emphasis ours):  

Results Although we did not find evidence that state T21 laws were associated with cigarette, smokeless tobacco or ENDS [i.e. vapes] use overall, the federal T21 law was associated with lower use of all three tobacco products by 0.39–0.92 percentage points. State flavour restrictions were associated with lower use of cigarettes by 0.68 (−1.27 to –0.09) and ENDS by 0.56 (−1.11 to –0.00) percentage points, but not with smokeless tobacco. A three-way interaction revealed that state and federal T21 laws together were associated with a lower prevalence of ENDS use among 18–20 years, but there were no differences in cigarette use from both policies combined versus either alone.

Conclusion State and federal T21 laws are broadly effective at reducing adult tobacco use, while state flavour restrictions specifically lower use of cigarettes and ENDS.

Got that? The state level laws were useless, period, but the federal Tobacco 21 law passed in December 2019 was somehow "broadly effective" because it appeared to trivially reduce tobacco/nicotine product use by not even a full percentage point.  Never mind that that latter was not enforced until well into 2020, enforcement still remained spotty for a while, and that its passage coincided with two major confounds:  1) the EVALI (vaping illness) outbreak that, while clearly due to adulterated black market THC vape products, was fearmongered by the mainstream media to include all vape products, and 2) the COVID-19 pandemic that, for better or worse, seemed to discourage smoking and encourage quitting, since many people feared that smoking made them more vulnerable to the virus.  But no, it HAD to be due to the Tobacco 21 law, because reasons.  Or something. 

Even flavor restrictions were more effective than Tobacco 21 laws!

So how many IQ points did YOU lose from the mental gymnastics of reading all for the above quoted article abstract beyond the stuff in bold?  The study was behind a paywall of course, so we couldn't delve further into it, granted.  But even a cursory reading of the abstract shows that the Tobacco 21 laws are a joke, and not a very funny one at that.  And worse, it may have even driven some young vapers (back) to smoking, which would clearly be a net public health loss.  But try convincing the zealots of that!

These unimpressive findings dovetail nicely with other studies as well.  As for whether raising the tobacco/nicotine age limit from 18 to 21 reduces the use of such products among people under 18, the evidence for that is very weak and mixed at best.

As for the few previous studies that did appear to find statistically and practically significant effects from the Tobacco 21 laws, those apparent results are most likely a result of short-term effects as well as an artifact of confounders like cigarette tax hikes.  

(Cigarette tax hikes, which mean higher prices, are in fact one of the most effective and cost-effective ways to reduce smoking at the population level, though they still have their limits of course.  And while they may be classist, at least they are not ageist, and they don't blatantly violate anyone's civil rights.)

Regardless, even if Tobacco 21 laws were ever proven to be effective, Twenty-One Debunked would still oppose them on principle, as we believe that in a free society worthy of the name, civil rights inherently supersedes "public health".  That is true in regards to tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, or anything else.  

(Mic drop)

UPDATE:  A few older studies have found modest but significant decreases in retail tobacco sales following the raising of the smoking age to 21 in early adopter states like California and Hawaii.  And another study found no change in overall ever or current smoking among California 18-20 year olds, but did find a modest decrease in daily smoking among that age group relative to 21-23 year olds (whose daily smoking actually increased three years later) in the same state.  This of course echoes Miron and Tetelbaum (2009) as well as Asch and Levy (1987 and 1990), Males (1986), and Dee and Evans (2001) in regards to the 21 drinking age.  That is, endogeneity, early-adopter effects, short-term effects, and seesaw/delay effects all appear to be at play here.  The supposed miracle turned out to be a mirage all along, in other words.  Thus, especially in light of the most recent study discussed in this article, there were really no benefits that cannot be alternatively achieved with higher cigarette taxes and/or better enforcement of the previous 18 age limit, and if anything the 21 age limit appears to be counterproductive in the long run.

UPDATE 2:  Even the CDC's very own 2022 study found mixed and ambiguous effects of Tobacco 21 laws, and such effects sometimes even appeared to differ by race as well (in favor of whites, with null or even perverse effects on young people of color).  Oops!

UPDATE 3:  Another recent study found that while self-reported teen smoking and vaping rates declined after Tobacco 21 laws, biomarker exposure showed mixed evidence at best, implying that fewer young smokers are identifying as smokers (and similar findings for vaping).  Thus, the supposed reductions in smoking and vaping in surveys and sales data are at least largely an artifact of underreporting and cross-border shopping rather than real reductions.  Oops!

The Journey-Destination Problem

What we call the "journey-destination problem" is the fact that journeys are often much more dangerous than destinations.  For example, there is the fear that lowering the drinking age to 18 would, even if better overall in the long run, would still have adverse unintended consequences in the short run.  And we at Twenty-One Debunked address that fear head-on in our proposal to lower the drinking age to 18.

First and foremost, lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18 (in line with the rest of the world, and a good chunk of American history) is NOT a radical change at all.  So any (real or imagined) fears related to lowering it even further below 18, or abolishing the age limit altogether, do NOT apply to lowering it to 18.

Secondly, it is NOT like the (real or imagined) fears of suddenly legalizing something that was previously completely illegal for everyone.  Alcohol in its various forms has been broadly legal, tolerated, and openly advertised for most of recorded history.  It is the "devil we already know", basically.   So "same as before, but without the arrests or injustices" is actually pretty close to accurate here.

Thirdly, simple and practical things like raising the alcohol taxes and cracking down harder on drunk driving, drunk violence, drunk and disorderly conduct, and stuff like that, would basically render any feared unintended consequences academic in practice. This is true whether the drinking age is lowered to 18 gradually OR suddenly.

Fourthly, it's not the 1970s or 1980s anymore.  America is almost a completely different country now in so many ways, including for drunk driving.  The original, albeit still fatally flawed, crisis-based justification for coercively raising the drinking age to 21 in the 1980s is itself grossly outdated and basically academic now in the 21st century, hence the need for the pro-21 crowd to invent new, ever more specious and spurious justifications (such as junk neuroscience, and a perversion of the precautionary principle) for keeping it at 21, because reasons.

And finally, it is ultimately a matter of principle, as it is fundamentally a civil rights issue, far more so than it is a public health and safety issue.  Not everything can be reduced to crude utilitarianism, after all.  "Let us do evil, that good may come" is always and everywhere a trap, a lesson that is unfortunately too often learned the hard way.

(Mic drop)

One Of These Countries Is Not Like The Others

 A picture is worth a thousand words.

(Courtesy of Wikipedia)

Which country is the obvious outlier here?  Take a guess.  Oh yeah, the very same one with the legal drinking age of 21, of course: the USA.

Once the envy of the world, up until early to mid-1990s, the USA made enormous progress in traffic safety overall, only to stall out and lag behind relative to the rest of the rich world, and eventually even regress on an absolute basis from 2010 onwards.  Why? Because we failed to see the forest for the trees.  We prioritized drivers over pedestrians, speed and convenience over safety, "bigger is better", and so on.  Larger vehicles, higher speeds, and poor design of both vehicles as well as roads/streets became the norm, going in generally the opposite direction as the rest of the world.  All while piddling over the usual wedge issues of things like age restrictions.

In other words, America's pharisaical culture of fear and safetyism strains out a gnat, while swallowing a camel.  Move along, nothing to see here....

P.S.  To anyone who says that this is somehow why the USA "needs" to keep the drinking age 21, well, then, you completely missed the whole point of this article.  And thus you may need your head examined. 

What Should The BAC Limit Be?

It is long past time to revisit the issue of BAC limits for driving once again, specifically for small amounts of alcohol, as it is already obvious for larger amounts.

Twenty-One Debunked believes that, in a perfect world, no one would ever dare to get behind the wheel after having even the slightest amount of alcohol in their system, period.  We would also have safe self-driving cars and state-of-the art public transportation, streets would be designed to maximize safety for all users rather than the convenience of only some users, and so on.  But unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world.  And we never will either.  Think protopian, not utopian.

Thus, we need to be realistic in terms of what sort of BAC limits and penalties we set. Note that the swiftness and certainty of punishment is far more effective than severity.  And we need to prioritize getting actual drunk drivers off the road above all.  Focus on the sharks, not the guppies or dolphins. 

Borrowing from Denmark, one of the heaviest drinking cultures in the world and not even remotely a temperance society, we currently believe that the per se legal limit should be 0.05% in general, and 0.00% if observed to be driving recklessly.

Borrowing from most of Canada, we believe that only a BAC above 0.08% should carry  criminal charges, and 0.05% to 0.08% should be only a traffic violation with a brief administrative license suspension and brief vehicle impoundment and a modest fine.  For novice drivers of any age with less than two consecutive, accident and violation-free years of licensed driving, or under 21, whichever is longer, the BAC limit should be either 0.00% or 0.02%, also a traffic violation less than or equal to that above 0.05%.

If the limit is officially set to 0.00% for effect, any test result below the limit of quantitative (LOQ) must be treated as a presumptive zero (by that, I mean a conclusive presumption).  If it is a handheld breathalyzer device, or if the LOQ is unknown for the instrument, any result below 0.02% shall be a presumptive zero.  And all failing breathalyzer results should be confirmed on a second device.

Penalties should be graduated.  For those with above 0.08% but below 0.15%, a first offense should be a misdemeanor, in addition to any administrative license revocation.  There can also be an option to proceed only administratively and thus summarily.  Repeat offenses above 0.08%, or any offenses above 0.15% (or "aggravated DUI"), and/or with any kids under 16 in the car and/or when a serious accident occurs, should be automatic felonies with stiff sentences and heavy fines that can only be downgraded upon successful completion of an alcohol treatment program, that is, the classic "felony hammer".  And license revocations after the second offense above 0.08% need to be (more or less) permanent.  No more people still driving after their second, third, fourth, or fifth (!) DUI, ever again.

And those who drunkenly kill or maim innocent people, well, they need to go away for a very, very long time.  No excuses.  Do the crime, do the time.

And enforcement of these BAC limits should be done not only with checkpoints, but also with roving patrols as well, including the back roads especially.  And also use the "fish in a barrel method" in the parking lots of bars and clubs too.  We need to get these ticking time bombs off the road, yesterday.

So what are we waiting for?

UPDATE:  While the evidence on zero tolerance laws is mixed at best, we will concede there may also be some side benefits to these laws as well.  Whether those alleged benefits are actually worth it remains an open question.

An Easy Way To Quash The Black Market, Solve The Potency Problem, Protect Small Businesses, AND "Bring Back Mids" Too

Here's an idea.  In addition to moving from half-assed quasi-legalization to full legalization of cannabis, how about introducing a new type of retail license:  the "half-license"?  It would be similar to alcohol licenses that only allow the sale of beer and/or wine but not hard liquor, and would only allow the sale of weed or hash with a potency less than, say 10%, and perhaps low-potency cannabis edibles and beverages too.  Meanwhile, only those with full licenses would be able to sell the stronger stuff.  And allow any place that sells beer and/or wine to sell the lower-potency cannabis as well, and allow at least some dedicated liquor stores to sell all types of cannabis products. 

Not only would low-potency, "extraction grade" or "trim" weed (like what was normal in the 1990s and earlier) be incentivized to sell as-is rather than extracting it and turning it into concentrates, as now there would finally be a market for the new (old) stuff, but that would also undercut the black market without interfering with legitimate dispensaries that would carry on as now.  And since nostalgia is back in vogue these days, why not take advantage of that?

So many problems could be solved at once.  But that would make too much sense, right?

Cannabis Legalization STILL Not A Disaster, In Canada Or The USA

Yet another study debunks the prohibitionists once again.  When Canada legalized cannabis for recreational use in 2018 (for flower, followed by concentrates and edibles in 2020), there was no increase in cannabis-related hospitalizations for either 18-24 year olds or those 25+ following legalization.  Keep in mind that in Canada, the federal age limit for cannabis is 18, and the provinces set it at 18 in Alberta and Quebec (the latter has since raised it to 21, alas), and 19 elsewhere, largely matching the legal drinking and tobacco smoking ages in most provinces.  The study, interestingly enough, looked at data specifically from Alberta, which was the only province that kept it at 18 consistently since legalization, and thus the most permissive one.

This dovetails nicely with other studies in both Canada and the USA, in which the dire predictions of the doomsayers notably failed to materialize.

UPDATE:  And before anyone mentions "Tokelahoma", we should note that both violent and property crime in Oklahoma have actually been trending downward, not upward, since their "Wild West" of free market "medical" cannabis legalization in 2018.  Crime in the state is slightly above the national average, but that was true even long before such legalization too.  And a few odd high-profile incidents do NOT a trend make or break.  As we have noted repeatedly before, the correlation between cannabis legalization and real crime is, for all practical purposes, essentially null.  In fact, there is some evidence of a decrease in crime.

And another study finds no increase, and in fact a decrease, of young adults driving under the influence of either cannabis OR alcohol following legalization. 

And while it is debatable whether cannabis legalization actually reduces the use of alcohol or tobacco, data from state tax receipts at the very least shows no increase in the consumption of either of the latter two substances following legalization.

UPDATE:  Another study finds an inverse relationship between recreational cannabis legalization and intimate partner violence, the opposite of what researchers predicted.  That is, legalization appeared to reduce it, contrary to "Reefer Madness" stereotypes.

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 our armed forces who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country, past and present.  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 ageist 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, period.  And it's very simple to prevent.  If you plan to drive, don't drink, and if you plan to drink, don't drive.  It's not rocket science.   Designate a sober driver, call a cab or rideshare, crash on the couch, or even walk if you have to.  Or don't drink--nobody's got a gun to your head.

(Mic drop)

Disturbing Behaviour (Satire)

The 1998 horror sci-fi film Disturbing Behavior was a classic in the youth rights-adjacent genre.  It takes place, of course, in the USA (Washington State).  But what if it took place in the nearby Canadian province of Alberta, who is light-years ahead of the USA (a pitifully low bar to clear, we know) in terms of youth rights?  How would Disturbing Behaviour (note the spelling) go in that context?

Student 1:  "Oh, so a bunch of wannabe technocrats are trying to do some sort of weird mind control thought reform brainwashing crap on us.  How cute." 

Student 2:  "It's not gonna work on us, though.  They picked the wrong town to mess with, and probably the wrong province too." (Laughs)

Technocrat:  "Foiled again!" (Packs up and moves far away)

The End

(Credits roll, to the same song as the original, "Got You (Where I Want You)" by The Flys)

Still More Things Underage Drinkers Didn't Do

In the past, we would chronicle and discuss countless examples of drinkers OVER 21 behaving badly, as "Things Underage Drinkers Didn't Do".  Time to do it again:

In the past few months or so in America:

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly crash her car into a birthday party, killing two children. 

An underage drinker did NOT punch a flight attendant multiple times after drinking rum, causing the flight to divert, and then have the chutzpah to spit on and groin-kick the police officers who escorted him off the flight.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly BITE a flight attendant on an international flight, forcing the flight to divert.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly drive 105 mph with a BAC of 0.23 and crash into and kill another driver.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly drive in the wrong direction on I-95 and kill a young nursing student. 

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly steal a car and then crash it into two police cars.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly run over an elderly woman with a snowplow in a parking lot, killing her.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly bite the finger off of a wedding guest who tried to restrain him after he inappropriately touched another guest.

An underage drinker did NOT have the chutzpah to get herself arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct at an AA meeting of all places.  Not to be outdone in chutzpah, she kicked the police officers and added insult to injury by puking in the patrol car.

An underage drinker did NOT pull a gun on another parent at a youth football game because of something they said, then argued with police and threatened to kill the K9 too.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is just the tip of the iceberg...

UPDATE:  Also, an underage drinker did NOT drink so much that she drunkenly smashed her car into a crowd of 16 pedestrians crossing the street, injuring 14 and killing two of them, then left the scene of the crash until she was caught, all while pregnant. 

An underage drinker did NOT get so wasted that she grabbed an unrelated 10 year old boy in a Jersey Shore motel swimming pool and swung him around and dunked him underwater, then jumped on and inappropriately grabbed his father when he tried to intervene, and then became belligerent with police and proceeded to BITE one officer's hand as well.

Cannabis Legalization Still Not A Disaster After All

The latest evidence finds that cannabis legalization was NOT a disaster after all, and that essentially NONE of the prohibitionists' histrionic fears had come to pass.  Yes, really.  That's the good news.

The bad news?  Legalization has been half-assed thus far, and we need to finish the job. Yesterday.  First of all, we need to fully legalize it at the federal level and get it out of the ridiculous legal limbo it has been in for years.  Secondly, we need to treat it no more stringently than alcohol or tobacco, not tax it excessively, and make retail licenses cheaper and easier to get, to reduce barriers to entry.  And finally, we need to reduce the age limit to 18.  Do all of these things, and the black market will wither on the vine.

So what are we waiting for?

What Should The Driving Age Be? (Updated Re-Post)

One thing that Twenty-One Debunked has been slacking on lately is the other main age limit in the drinking/driving equation--the driving age.  While we have not always been very clear on that particular issue and generally left it on the back burner, it merits attention nonetheless.

There is indeed an interesting paradox compared with the drinking age.  With the notable exceptions of Canada (permit age 14, 15, or 16 depending on province, license age 16), Australia (16 1/2 in one state, 17 or 18 in the rest), and New Zealand (16), every other industrialized (and semi-industrialized) nation on Earth has a driver license age of 17 or higher, and most are 18.  Yet these countries all have drinking ages lower than the USA, and nearly all of them are 18 or lower.  Many are as low as 16 (though a few European nations have recently raised the drinking age to 18). And most of these countries have far lower rates of traffic deaths, alcohol-related or otherwise, than the USA.

On the surface, that strongly recommends in favor of raising the driving age in conjunction with lowering the drinking age, particularly setting the driving age higher than the drinking age instead of the other way around.  At one time, the founder of Twenty-One Debunked advocated doing exactly that.  But such an approach glosses over some serious issues involving the car culture of the USA.  First, with our inferior public transportation infrastructure, we cannot compare the situation here to Europe.  Canada or Australia would be a much better comparison.  Secondly, the odds of us ever lowering the drinking age below 18 are slim to none, and we no longer consider such a goal worthwhile.  But most importantly, the evidence that a much higher driving age would make roads any safer is questionable at best.

Renowned sociologist and youth-rights activist Mike Males did a famous study in 2006 that found that California's tough new graduated driver license (GDL) law implemented in 1996 did reduce traffic deaths among 16-17 year olds--but also increased traffic deaths for 18-19 year olds enough to more than offset the apparent lifesaving effect among younger drivers.  In other words, it merely delayed such deaths, or worse, led to a net increase.  He also found in another study that much of the increased risk among younger drivers is actually the result of poverty, not "immaturity" or "underdeveloped brains".  The rest can largely be chalked up to inexperience, and the difference between genders (males being worse) dwarfs any unaccounted for age difference.  While his research was seen as controversial among the establishment and many disputed it, it nonetheless pans out rather well.  A 2011 national study by Masten et al. confirms Mike Males' general findings: after adjusting for potential confounders, stronger GDL laws (compared with weaker ones) were associated with lower fatalities for 16 year olds but higher fatalities for 18 year olds (and possibly 19 year olds as well), and the net effect for 16-19 year olds as a whole was not significantly different from the null.  In other words, it was a wash overall.

Of course, it is true that 16 year old first-year drivers do have significantly higher fatal crash risks that 17 year old first-year drivers--though 17 year old novices are apparently no worse than 18 or 19 year old novices.  (There were apparently not enough first-year drivers 20 and older to make a valid comparison for them at the time, but I imagine it would be very similar.)  Thus, it is possible that raising the driving age to 17 would in fact result in a net reduction in traffic deaths over the lifecycle compared with the status quo, while raising it to 18 or higher would likely only delay deaths compared with a driving age of 17.  New Jersey, for example, has a driving age of 16 for permit and 17 for license--the highest in the nation besides NYC with a de facto age of 18--and their teen traffic death rates are, contrary to stereotypes, lower than neighboring states (interestingly even before their GDL law was implemented, and declined further after that).  Compared with Connecticut, New Jersey's fatality rate was much lower for 16 year olds, slightly higher for 17 year olds, and slightly lower for 18 year olds, so the net effect was death reduction.  This was true in all time periods studied, back in the day (even long before GDL in either state) as well as more recently.  So being a year behind may not necessarily negate the benefits of delaying entry to licensed driving--though raising the age any higher than that might. 

(New Jersey's GDL, unlike most states, applies night and passenger restrictions to all new drivers under 21 rather than 18.  And for drivers over 21, there is still a GDL, but minus the night and passenger restrictions.  While some form of provisional license is a wise idea for new drivers of all ages, Twenty-One Debunked does NOT support any such night and passenger restrictions on drivers over 18, and only very grudgingly tolerates them before 18.  In NJ, the best that one could say is that these restrictions "flatten the curve", to put it in the lingua franca of the 2020s)

Meanwhile, Alberta (Canada), which is fairly rural sets their permit age at 14 and license age at 16, and at any age one must have their provisional license (albeit with far fewer restrictions than the USA) for two years and be violation and accident free for the last year before upgrading to the full license.  The road test is of course more difficult than in the USA.  And their drinking age is 18.  And they seem none the worse for wear in terms of traffic casualties.

So what should the driving age be in the USA?  The optimal age may in fact vary depending on how rural or urban a state or region is, but we do not believe it should be any higher than 16 for permit and 17 for license.  And of course we believe that the drinking age should be 18.  Additionally, we should definitely make the road test tougher like it is in other countries, and improve our driver education courses as well.  Raising the alcohol taxes and the gas tax would likely save many lives as well.  But on balance, raising the driving age any higher than 17 in this country would likely do more harm than good. And while GDLs in general are likely beneficial on balance, there is likely such a thing as too strict--particularly when it only targets drivers below a certain age (as opposed to all new drivers like in many other countries like Canada), and such a poorly designed one can actually backfire.

Emancipation For A Post-Capitalist Society

One thing that needs to be better refined for a post-capitalist, protopian future is the process of "emancipation of minors," to quote the official term of art despite its derogatory connotations.  Here are some ideas from Twenty-One Debunked:

First and foremost, let's jettison the terms "emancipation" and especially "minors".  The former has historical connotations related to slavery, while the latter is an ageist slur that implies that young people below some arbitrary age are somehow less important than those above that age limit, as even Hillary Clinton famously pointed out in the 1990s.  Replace the former with "release (of restrictions)" and the latter with "youth" or "underage".  For the same reasons, the terms "access" and "custody" have already been largely replaced by "contact" and "residence", respectively, in most of the Anglosphere. 

Secondly, we need to follow "Alberta rules" and set the default age of majority (legal adulthood) at no higher than 18, and NO age limit for anything can be set even a day higher than 18, except with truly extraordinary justification (like for being President or VP of a country with hair-triggered nuclear weapons and other WMDs), or for senior citizen stuff.  And for any (non-convicted) individuals over 18 to have even one iota of their civil rights abridged or taken away even temporarily, the onus is inherently on the state to prove that the individual is incompetent, NOT on the individual to prove their own competence.  Anything else is inherently ageist, classist, racist (by extension of and intersection with classism), and/or ableist in practice, if not also in theory as well. 

Thirdly, while for young people below the default age of majority, the onus would by definition be on them as individuals to prove their own competence, it needs to be done in a fair and just manner and as objectively as possible.  And doing so needs to also provide at least some sort of alternatives to the traditional and narrow (and increasingly outmoded) milestones of adulthood for generations past.

Twenty-One Debunked's early thought is to have two categories of release:  1) "conditional release", which begins the process, and can still be revoked if the conditions are not met, and 2) "final release", which will happen after a year or two following conditional release, or age 18, whichever occurs sooner, and cannot be revoked.  The minimum requirement to achieve conditional release should be 1) the completion of Tanner Stage 5 of puberty plus a mental age of 16 or higher as measured by any standardized IQ test, college entrance exam, or graduation exit exam, OR 2) a chronological age of 16, whichever occurs sooner.  The minimum age to achieve final release should be a chronological age of 16 or at least one year since conditional release began, whichever occurs later.  All of the other details are of course not cut-and-dried, and should be flexible.  (And unlike Dr. Robert Epstein's paradigm, let's NOT follow the DMV model!  Only the most left-brained, out of touch, ivory-tower academic elites could think that is somehow a good or wise idea, because reasons.)

And when Universal Basic Income (UBI) is eventually implemented, only upon final release (or 18, whichever is sooner) should an individual receive their own unconditional UBI directly.  Rather, upon conditional release, they should receive a "conditional stipend" instead.  (Before any kind of release, by default their share of UBI would go directly to the young person's primary parent or guardian.)

Of course, for as long as we live in "mass society", for all of its myriad flaws, there probably still should be some sort of hard age limits (i.e. purchase ages for alcohol and other psychoactive substances, age of consent, working in truly and inherently dangerous jobs, etc.) that remain true regardless of one's individual status, but nearly all age limits can be at least partially replaced in that regard.  And again, no such age limits should ever be higher than 18.

So what are we waiting for?