A Brief History of Alcohol in America

Let's face it. Our great nation was founded by drinkers. Many of whom drank enough that by today's standards they would be considered "frequent binge drinkers" or worse. The amount of alcohol consumed while the Constitution was being written was staggering (pun intended), hence all the (supposed) loopholes in the document. Hell, even the Puritans drank--they brought more beer than water with them on the Mayflower!

Colonial America

Being British, beer was the drink of choice for the early colonists and remains the number one alcoholic beverage in America to this day, though in the 1600s a new Caribbean drink made from the sugarcane byproducts (molasses and cane juice) grew in popularity. It was rum. George Washington was a big fan of it. However, the British restrictions on rum from the Caribbean led to its decline, and its being supplanted by American whiskey. Whiskey was easier and cheaper to transport than the corn from which it was made. Distilled spirits in general were considered aqua vitae, or water of life (in Latin). Indeed, alcohol was often just as important as life itself to the colonists.

But this tolerance toward alcohol was by no means universal. In many colonies, whites were often forbidden from selling alcohol to blacks, whether free or slave. And Native Americans were often hypocritically viewed as too "savage" to drink, despite the fact that white settlers often got them drunk to facilitate cheating them out of their land (failing that, brute force was used).

The Early Republic

By 1790, Americans were drinking, on average, three times what we do now per capita. In 1791, Alexander Hamilton put a tax on whiskey (and other distilled spirits, but not beer or wine) ostensibly to pay down the national debt, which led to the Whiskey Rebellion by farmers in southwest Pennsylvania. They were mad that the cheapest way to transport corn (turning it into whiskey) had now become relatively expensive, and that small producers were taxed more than larger ones. So the farmers revolted. Shots were fired, and a tax collector was even tarred and feathered. George Washington sent in 13,000 troops to quash the rebellion, but the instigators were eventually pardoned. Unlike the Boston Tea Party, it failed miserably. And that, my friends, is the real reason why alcohol (especially hard liquor) is taxed today, but not tea or coffee.

Our national anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner, was simply an 1814 poem by Francis Scott Key set to the tune of a popular British drinking song.  Why do you think it has so many octaves?  If you could sing it and stay on key, you were assumed to be sober enough for another round.

Attitudes toward alcohol varied throughout American history. Originally it was considered a gift from God, while its abuse was generally condemned. Even children drank beer and cider. But that gradually changed with the newly-created temperance movement. As alcohol problems grew in the late 1700s and early 1800s, so to did the temperance movement, who originally focused on "ardent" spirits (hard liquor) as opposed to beer and wine, and for voluntarily reducing or giving up alcohol. The mid-1800s was when the movement really gained strength, and so did social reformers of other causes. There was an alliance between the burgeoning first-wave feminist movement, temperance, abolitionism, and several other movements that lasted for decades. Industrialization helped to fuel the anti-alcohol sentiment, as did the lack of a national consensus on what constituted responsible drinking. Various churches signed on and tinkered with the established theology of the time, now speciously claiming (with zero evidence) that Jesus did not drink wine, but grape juice instead. By the end of the 19th century, the pendulum had swung toward America being alcohol-negative, meaning that the problems associated with its abuse were blamed on the substance itself rather than the abuse thereof. This view continues to this day, albeit in a slightly different form.

Pre-Prohibition

The first anti-alcohol laws in America were the "Black Codes," the forerunners of the Jim Crow laws. Both of these sets of laws prohibited drinking, gun ownership, and various other things specifically by black people, and even gave them a curfew. Sound familiar?

The drunkest decade in American history was from 1900-1910. Many people, mostly men, regularly went to their local saloons to get sloshed. These relatively unregulated establishments often offered other vices, like gambling, prostitution, and cockfighting (George Washington would have liked the latter one). But hey, at least they provided free food! And there was no drinking age either, except in Wisconsin. Not like America had a drinking age before, of course.

Then the most ominous five words were uttered, the ones that often open up a major can of worms: "Something has to be done!" And so, the temperance movement became the Prohibition movement, seeking to ban all alcohol period. Groups like the fanatical Anti-Saloon league led by Carrie Nation were founded (though today's MADD would probably make them blush!), and the movement grew. Prohibitionists played on the ubiquitous anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, and even anti-Semitic prejudices of the day to attract more followers, and that tactic was successful in getting recruits who would otherwise just be sitting on the fence.  The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), having been reborn in 1915, also ardently supported the prohibition movement.

Prohibition

Prohibition began in Kansas and Oklahoma when they entered the Union dry from day one. From 1910-1919, several states went dry on their own as well. During World War I, the feds decided to enact "wartime Prohibition" that would take effect in 1919, but the war had ended in 1918. So the Prohibitionists went all the way this time. They passed a Constitutional amendment (the 18th Amendment) that would take effect in 1920, one year after passage. This was followed by the Volstead Act, its companion federal law, which was vetoed by President Wilson but overridden by Congress. The law prohibited the sale, manufacturing, furnishing, delivery, and transportation (but not specifically use) of "intoxicating liquor," which was defined as any beverage with 0.5% alcohol or more. Though an exception was later made for home winemaking. Other exceptions included alcohol for industrial or medical use, and wine for religious use. Advocates of Prohibition believed that crime and other social ills would disappear as a result of banning booze. Some communities even sold their jails, believing they would become obsolete. Boy, were they wrong!

The Roaring Twenties was a crazy time in history, hence the name. Though many scholars believe that alcohol consumption (along with drunk and disorderly arrests, cirrhosis deaths, and possibly even drunk driving fatalities) declined significantly during the first two years, they note that it was already declining before 1920, and after 1922 it began rising again. Moonshining became an art form. Bootleggers and speakeasies were the order of the day. In fact, they grew so much that there were eventually double the number of speakeasies than there were saloons before Prohibition! Thus, the effective "outlet density" doubled as a result of Prohibition. But unlike saloons, illegal speakeasies were decidedly co-ed, and women began drinking like never before. Speakeasies were not exactly safe either, as one was inevitably in the company of rather dodgy characters far away from the presence of any police or security. Someone could easily slip you a Mickey Finn and take full advantage of you, or simply massive amounts of booze would have had the same effect. You also had to worry about the potency and even purity of the hooch being sold, as it was often adulterated or contaminated with toxic substances. Not surprisingly, alcohol poisoning cases increased nearly fourfold from 1920 to 1925. Crime rates also skyrocketed, reaching a peak in 1933, and alcohol was controlled by organized crime. In fact, Prohibition was the main reason the Mafia got as powerful as they did. Society became corrupted as otherwise law-abiding citizens were now criminals, and even the police took kickbacks from the organized crime elements of the day.

Interestingly, teen drinking was found to have increased as well, an apparent unintended consequence of banning alcohol for everyone. Speakeasies routinely sold to minors, and obviously did not ask for ID. This was the start of a secular trend that would more or less continue unabated until 1979. Remember that before Prohibition, the majority of states had no legal drinking age at all.

In addition, use of substitutes for alcohol also increased. These included cannabis, tobacco, coffee, patent medicines, cocaine, opiates, and ether. One favorite was "paint remover," which was industrial alcohol that was required by law to be denatured with methanol, a poison that can cause blindness or even death in relatively small amounts.  Another was "ginger jake," a patent medicine that was eventually adulterated (to fool regulators) with a neurotoxic plasticizer that often caused paralysis.

Consumption patterns changed dramatically as well. Almost no one went to a speakeasy and had just one or two beers to relax. It was more like many, many shots worth of bathtub gin, moonshine, or whatever, with the intention to get completely wasted. Those who went through all that trouble to get in and pay high prices for low-quality booze wanted to make the most of it, and getting anything short of plastered was thus considered a waste of time and money. Hard liquor was more popular than beer because it was much easier to conceal. Since the illegal hooch was harsh-tasting, it was often mixed with soda, leading to the invention of the cocktail. That made it easier to stomach, and easy to drink quickly as well. Sound familiar?

At first, Prohibition was loosely enforced in most of the country, and had much popular support. But it was widely disobeyed, and thus enforcement increased dramatically from 1925 to 1932. All to no avail or course, as alcohol consumption and related problems continued to skyrocket, even during the depths of the Great Depression when people could barely afford food. Now, that really says something! More and more money was being spent on trying to enforce a largely unenforceable law that 70% of the population had turned against by 1933. It became obvious by then that Prohibition had a corrosive effect on society at large. Ironically, women (who were more likely than men to support Prohibition initially) turned against it in record numbers. The tide had turned. And so the law had to change.

Post-Prohibition

In 1933, alcohol laws were first liberalized with the passage of the Cullen-Harrison Act in January, which legalized beer with less than 3.2% alcohol by weight (4% by volume). Full legalization at the federal level occurred on December 5, 1933, with the passage of the 21st Amendment. Upon legalization, crime rates plummeted. Per capita consumption increased modestly, but was already increasing before, so a causal relationship cannot possibly be drawn in this case. This amendment still allowed the states to decide for themselves how to regulate alcohol, and keep it illegal if they so desired. And 18 states continued Prohibition afterward, but all of them eventually legalized alcohol, with Mississippi (one of the first states to ban alcohol voluntarily in 1907) being the last state to do so in 1966. Most states still allow local governments to ban the sale of alcohol if they choose, and there are several dry towns and dry counties to this day (mostly rural ones in southern states).

The states that legalized alcohol varied in their methods of regulation. Some allowed it to be sold only by the state, while others allowes private enterprises to do so with a license to sell it. Some states had blue laws, others did not. Taxes varied as well. But the most salient method of regulation was by age, a fairly new concept at the time. Although all but one state (Wisconsin) had no drinking age before Prohibition, most states felt the need to have one, and it was seen as a reasonable compromise between no limit and continued total prohibition. The most commonly chosen age limit was 21, since that was the age of majority in nearly all states, but two states (New York and Louisiana) chose 18 instead in the 1930s. New York's justification for 18 was that 18-20 year olds would drink anyway, and it would be better for them not to be on the wrong side of the law. Eight other states and DC had split ages of 18 for beer and 21 for liquor (wine varied), especially in states that had major breweries. One chose 19, and two chose 20. Some states had no age limit at first, but then enacted one. (The age of majority was 21 because of a 600-year tradition in English Common Law that set that as the age of adulthood, most likely based originally on the age that a squire became a knight in the Middle Ages.)



The 1970s: Lowered Drinking Age to 18

These age limits remained fairly static until 1969, when the Vietnam War and the draft made it crystal clear that 18-20 year olds were hypocritically considered old enough to go to war, but not old enough to vote or drink in most states.  Not only that, but in 1967 there was actually a federally-funded study of possible solutions to America's notorious drinking problem that recommended that, among other things, the drinking age be lowered to 18 in those states with higher ages--an common-sense idea that would be considered heresy by today's government.  Even the National Council of Churches supported the report's recommendations.  Maine and Nebraska were the first states to lower the drinking age to 20 in 1969, and further lowered a few years later. In 1970, Alaska lowered it to 19, and the following year Tennessee and Vermont lowered it to 18.  In 1971, the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18, so most states lowered their age of majority and drinking age along with the voting age. Most lowered the drinking age to 18, though a few lowered it to 19, and Delaware lowered it to 20 and no further. The same happened in Canada as well. The age lowering occurred mainly from 1972-73, a few states did so in 1974, and Alabama was the last to lower it (the ordinary way) in 1975. Oklahoma lowered it in 1976 due to a court case that equalized the drinking age for men and women. The Baby Boomers were clearly a force to be reckoned with and those in power knew it. So by 1976, 30 states lowered their drinking ages, 8 were already 18, and the remaining 12 (including all three West Coast states) kept their drinking ages at 21 throughout for some reason.



Other changes occurred as well during this period. Many formerly monopoly states had privatized alcohol sales beginning in the 1960s. In 1978, President Carter legalized home-brewing of beer, which had remained illegal since prohibition due to a clerical error. Thus America's alcohol laws were now the most liberal they had been since 1920.

However, in 1975 the war was over, and by 1976 the sentiments toward teen drinking began to change. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety came out with a 1974 study of a small number of states that purportedly showed a modest increase in under-21 traffic fatalities as a result of lowering the drinking age. A few other studies came out around 1975-76 that used time-series data in a single state each, often with no comparison group, and appeared to reach the same conclusion, especially for "alcohol-related" fatalities. (Often with a strange love for raw numbers of fatalities rather than rates, even at a time when the youth population was exploding.) However, in at least one state that saw an increase (Michigan), the reporting methods had changed during that time. Most states, lowered age or not, saw a decrease in overall fatalities from 1970-75, with only a handful reporting an increase (including North Dakota, which remained at 21 throughout). And many of these increases were suspicious. The FARS database did not come out until 1975, so any data before that is bound to have problems. And "alcohol-involvement" was often merely subjective since few drivers were actually tested for BAC back then, so such figures are junk. Nearly all states, on the other hand, saw increases in fatalities from 1976-1980, followed by sharp decreases, including states that had kept the age at 21 throughout. Remember too that the blood alcohol limit for driving was 0.15 in most states, nearly double what it is now, and the laws against drunk driving were essentially toothless and loosely enforced. Drunk driving was more socially acceptable back then as well, even expected of you if you were the least drunk person among your friends. So too were "liquid lunches," both at school and work. And alcohol consumption, among both teens and adults, increased in all states as well (partly due to falling real alcohol prices in the 1970s) until it peaked around 1980 and then declined.

Moral Panic and MADD

Regardless of what actually happened or the causes thereof, a moral panic occurred in America over teen drinking, beginning in the late 1970s. A deviancy amplification spiral by the media only fueled the fire. Minnesota raised its drinking age to 19 in 1976, only three years after lowering it to 18, and many other states followed suit from 1977-1983. A handful raised it to 20, mostly in the New England region. And in 1978, Michigan raised it to 21, being joined by a few more states in the early 1980s, such as New Jersey in 1983. But most states did not want to raise it that high, and some wanted to keep it at 18. Thus, a patchwork quilt of different drinking ages stretched from coast to coast.



Enter MADD in 1980. Candy Lightner's 13 year old daughter was hit and killed by a 46 year old drunk driver with prior convictions, and was given a fairly lenient sentence. Lightner decided to found Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) and launch a crusade against this very real problem. To their credit, they spread awareness about it and made it less socially acceptable to drive drunk, and pushed for (and got) tougher new laws against it. However, grief turned to vengeance, and they rapidly became more and more fanatical, and took the fight far beyond drunk driving, or even driving itself. It was not enough that the drunk drivers themselves had to pay. No, America had to pay for the sins of their worst, as a society that tolerated DUI back then. Or at least start with one demographic group at a time, so as not to seem too neo-prohibitionist too soon. And they found their target demographic, one that seldom voted and had by that point become politically impotent--18-20 year olds. A group that was increasingly reviled by the media as stupid, ignorant, immature, rebellious, and violent. Nevermind the inconvenient fact that 21-24 year olds were (and still are) the worst drunk drivers in terms of fatalities, or that Lightner's daughter was killed by a 46 year old (a teenager was killed by an adult). MADD pressured states to raise their drinking ages to 21 shortly after being founded. Most were not very eager to do so. So MADD turned its sights to Washington instead.

The Drinking Age is Raised to 21

In 1982, President Reagan appointed a special commission to study the problem of drunk driving in America, and they gave 39 recommendations. Number 8 was to have a uniform drinking age of 21 across all states to eliminate "blood borders," which is similar to what happens when people from dry counties get drunk in their wet neighboring counties and drive home. (Though not every study supports the blood borders hypothesis) That was the one that really stuck the most, more than the other 38 recommendations, and that MADD latched onto. Nevermind that a uniform drinking age of 18 would do the same thing, or even beefing up patrols near the relevant state lines would likely suffice. Or make drunk driving a federal crime (punishable by federal prison time) when done across state lines as well.  But none of these alternatives were seriously considered by the feds when cajoled by MADD to implement what they wanted.  And "dry county syndrome" was not even discussed.

In 1984 (a rather ominous year), Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) wrote the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, which withheld a portion of federal highway funding from any state that did not have a law on the books by October 1986 prohibiting "purchase and public possession" of any alcoholic beverage (0.5% ABV or greater) by all people under 21. Those that did not comply would lose 5% of funds in FY 1987 and 10% in FY 1988 (it was later made permanent). While the law contained several exceptions and loopholes, it was eerily similar to the Volstead Act in both its definitions and wording. The highway funding penalty was an end-run around the Constitution since the federal government has no delegated power to set a drinking age (it is up to the states). Lautenberg wrote it partly becuase he wanted to force New York to raise its drinking age to 21 since young New Jerseyans would go there, get drunk, and drive back.  This very issue had been a bone of contention between the two states in the 1960s before NJ lowered its drinking age to 18 in 1973, and now it had returned.  Again, New Jersey could have avoided this entirely by not raising their own drinking age back to 21 when New York's was 19 (NY raised it to 19 in 1982 after being 18 since 1934, nearly half a century). They reap what they sow. But Lautenberg (and others) wanted the feds to protect them from the consequences of their own failed policy.

Lautenberg's wish was granted. By then, the moral panic had reached a crescendo. Under the influence of both MADD and junk science, Congress passed the bipartisan bill. Reagan was against it at first because it violated states' rights, but 1984 was an election year and he was easily moved by MADD's emotional anecdotes, so he signed it into law. Despite her victory, Candy Lightner quit the organization in 1986, saying that it became far too "neo-prohibitionist" for her (her words, not ours). Evidently, some members talked about criminalizing driving after drinking any amount of alcohol, for all ages, and she took exception to that relatively extreme idea. But even that would be more lenient than banning people from drinking without driving, which is precisely what she wanted for those under 21.  (More about her later)



States reacted to the law in various ways. Some complied right away, or were already 21 before. Others were less eager to change. Some went along with it and passed sunset clauses for the 21 drinking age to expire in 1989, but the highway funding penalty was made permanent (10% in any year after 1988 as well) by the feds after this was discovered (though grandfather clauses were explicity allowed). Still others fought the federal law in the U.S. Supreme Court, and lost. The case South Dakota vs. Dole (1987) challenged the constitutionality of the law, but the law was unfortunately upheld, ultimately setting a precedent for further federal coercion by funding penalties for not following other federal laws in the future. By the October 1, 1986 deadline, only seven states had drinking ages below 21. In 1988, the last two states (South Dakota and Wyoming) finally bowed down to the feds and raised their drinking ages to 21, and some states had grandfather clauses that lasted until 1989. But Puerto Rico was no sellout. They chose to keep the age at 18 despite the 10% funding penalty and put up toll booths to make up the loss of money, and that became the "new normal" for them.



Louisiana was an interesting case. As a state that had a drinking age of 18 since the 1930s, and as one of the states that fought the feds in court, they reluctantly passed a law in 1987 raising the age to 21 de jure specifically for purchase and public possession in order to not lose highway funding. It followed the precise letter of the federal law. But they kept the age 18 otherwise, and no penalty for selling alcohol to those over 18. Believe it or not, that was still compliance with the federal law since purchase by 18-20 year olds was prohibited, but that made it toothless. Nor did the feds require penalties or enforcement, just that the laws be on the books. In other words, it was 21 only on paper, and 18 de facto in Louisiana. And they lost no highway funding for doing so. This prevailed until 1995, when Louisiana closed the sale loophole, making it 21 for that as well. In 1996, this was fought in the Louisiana Supreme Court and the 21 drinking age was overturned entirely, making the age 18 across the board for three months. An uproar occurred when the feds and Slick Willie threatened to take away highway funding, and the court unfortunately reversed its decision.

Effects and Aftermath

The effects of the drinking age hike in 38 states and DC (12 were 21 throughout) have been controversial, and the jury's still out on whether any lives were really saved.  A media and political pseduo-consensus that NHTSA's specious estimate of 900 lives per year being saved is true has prevailed until very recently. First of all, out of 12 million 18-20 year olds, that amounts to 0.0075% of that population. And about 90% of those who die in alcohol-related crashes are the drunk drivers themselves (55%) and their willing passengers, while more innocent people are killed each year by trains than by drunken 18-20 year olds.  Second of all, many more than that number of lives is currently lost off the highways due to alcohol poisoning, non-traffic accidents, fights, and drowning in our neo-speakeasy atmosphere where alcohol is forced underground and made more dangerous than it has to be. Third of all, the "900 a year" figure is based on the decline in fatalities among 18-20 year olds in a few years in the 1980s, with the dual assumptions that 1) the apparent effects were due entirely to raising the drinking age and not confounding factors, and 2) the effects persisted beyond the first year or two, all else being equal.  Both assumptions are false, according to several studies (see Five Studies that Debunk the Rest for more info). So we need to be able to see the forest for the trees.

Also, some studies suggest that even if some lives were saved, it merely delayed the deaths by a few years, shifting them from 18-20 year olds to 21-24 year olds (again, see the aforementioned studies). So any claims of a net lifesaving effect are likely spurious. And here is the dirty little secret of the 21 drinking age: adding a few more years to the lives of 18 year old potential drunk drivers gives them that many more years to kill more innocent victims. Thus there may have even been a net increase in fatalities in the long run when you put it all together. The movie White Noise 2 comes to mind.

Remember too that a lot has changed since 1984. In fact, the decline in "alcohol-related" fatalities began in 1982, probably even earlier since FARS did not gather alcohol data until that year. Traffic fatalities in general for 18-20 year olds peaked in 1979-1980 and have declined fairly steadily since, and the same can be said for 15-24 year olds. These trends predate by several years the 21 drinking age in most states, and occurred in states that did not change their drinking ages as well. Save for the brief and modest increase in fatalities from 1976-1980 that occurred in nearly all states regardless of drinking age, what happened in the 1980s was part of a long-term, secular decline in 15-24 year old fatalities, and indeed for all ages, beginning in 1969. Various reasons for this trend include safer cars, improved traffic engineering, seat belt laws, tougher laws (and enforcement) against drunk driving, and public awareness and educational initiatives. And the same thing happened in Canada as well without raising the drinking age to 21, which really says something.  Ditto for Australia as well.

What about "binge" drinking, you ask? First of all, the term is being used incorrectly to refer to having 5 drinks in a night at least once in the past two weeks, regardless of how fast or slow, or of individual factors. And reducing it to a number of drinks strips away all context, and we know that context matters a great deal. That's why we put the term in scare quotes. Some definitions put the number at 4 drinks for women, but we'll use 5 for argument's sake. The media constantly alleges that it has gotten worse among teenagers. But surveys such as Monitoring the Future show "binge" drinking rates peaking for high school seniors between 1979-1981 and declining dramatically until about 1992, when it increased somewhat until 1997, and then decreased further until it recently hit a record low. This happened in nearly all states regardless of the drinking age, and was a secular trend. The same was true for 18-22 year olds who were not in college. For college students, however, it remained remarkably stable over the past few decades, hovering around 40% of students answering yes. But the devil is in the details. "Frequent binge drinking," or "binging" at least three times in the past two weeks, went up in the 1990s at a much faster rate than simple "binge" drinking. Semantics aside, that does not sound nearly as scary as when you consider the strong correlation between "extreme" drinking (10 or more drinks in a night, or 8 for a woman) and "frequent binging" found in one study. This truly dangerous behavior has not been tracked over time, so we don't know for sure, but given the correlation one can plausibly conclude that it increased over time, even when fewer people "binged" in general. In fact, from 1998-2005, alcohol poisoning deaths (a good proxy for extreme drinking) among college students tripled. This would not be surprising when you look at what happened during Prohibition, when artificial scarcity, unpredictability, forbidden fruit, and clandestinization led to truly dangerous drinking. The parallels between then and now are staggering, pun intended of course. Either way, it was the Law of Eristic Escalation in action. And that would soon goad the powers that be to get even tougher.

Remember too, that raising the drinking age may also increase underreporting of drinking and "binge" drinking in surveys, primarily due to its illegality and lessened social acceptability. Additionally, much like during Prohibition, hard liquor is now the drink of choice for teen drinkers, being much easier to conceal and more efficient in terms of getting drunk. Such concentrated beverages are easy to mismeasure, and self-poured mixed drinks made with them are usually much stronger than a can of beer, leading to underestimated reports of how many "drinks" are consumed. So survey results need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Though the National Minimum Drinking Age Act only required states to prohibit purchase and public possession in order to not lose highway funding, and had several exceptions, and did not mandate enforcement, many states took it a step further and passed various ancillary laws to prop up the failing 21 drinking age. These included dram shop, social host, keg registration, zero tolerance, use and lose, fake ID, furnishing to minors, attempt to purchase, and even prohibition of possession/consumption in private residences. Some states even prohibit parents from giving their own kids alcohol, though most still allow them to do so in private. Enforcement of some of the more wacky laws necessitates warrantless searches and/or arresting people for simply being at the wrong place at the wrong time with zero physical evidence. In a few states, cops even breathalyze pedestrians to attempt to enforce laws against underage "internal possession." Not like these ancillary laws really work either (except maybe zero tolerance for drinking and driving). But the cancer of arbitrary age discrimination has metastasized nonetheless, to the point where even colleges are expected to play "nanny" to 18-20 year old adults.

As for Candy Lightner (the same founder of MADD who quit the organization due to it becoming, in her own words, neoprohibitionist) she had the audacity to say the following in 2008 about the drinking age:

It [the brain of 18-year-olds] isn’t developed, and that’s exactly why the draft age is 18, because these kids are malleable. They will follow the leader, they don’t think for themselves and they are the last ones I want to say ‘here’s a gun, and here’s a beer.’ They are not adults; that’s why they’re in the military. They are not adults.

Apparently, she still stands by her initial support for the 21 drinking age, even if she has to implicity insult our men and women in uniform just to prove her point.  Honestly, is that really the best the pro-21 crowd can do?

And so, for 21 years now the drinking age has been 21 in all 50 states and DC. The issue has been quietly simmering on the back burner until very recently, when several states are seriously considering lowering the drinking age. Even many college presidents acknowledge that 21 is not working, despite it being enforced more stringently than ever before. That fact has been obvious from day one. Prohibition didn't work then, and it is not working now. And it's time to change our failed alcohol policy.

What better time than now?

Fiji Lowers Drinking Age to 18

Looks like the "21 Club" lost another member, and is now down to Palau, Sri Lanka, parts of India, a few Islamic countries, and of course the United States. The South Pacific island nation of Fiji decided on May 19, 2009 to lower the drinking age back to 18. In 2006, they rushed through a bill that raised the age from 18 to 21. Apparently, it hurt their tourism industry. Other reasons given were that an age limit of 21 was inconsistent with the age for getting married, paying taxes, being recruited in security agencies, and selling liquor. Funny how they can understand that, but not America. Really makes you wonder.

Full story can be read here.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra!

You are probably scratching your heads as we speak, asking yourselves why you should believe us? After all, we do appear to have an axe to grind about the drinking age debate. And hasn't the question of the drinking age been settled already? No, it has not been settled, despite the media and political pseudo-consensus on the matter. Since as far back as 1986, and as recently as 2007, several high-quality studies have been done that have broken any scientific consensus there may have been in the past, but those ones do not get equal time in the media. Our job at Twenty-One Debunked is simply to present the other side of the story, using those oft-forgotten studies. And when new pro-21 studies come out, we will critically review those as well. We do not claim to be prophets, but we (and anyone) can make some pretty good guesses based on the available research to date. Remember that no study is flawless, even the best ones.

It is up to you to decide which side you want to believe. But please, base your decision on the facts, not the messenger.

Neither the True Spirit of America Party (TSAP) nor Twenty-One Debunked have any affiliation with or connection to the alcohol industry, DISCUS, or Prof. David J. Hanson. Nor do we have any connection with Choose Responsibility or the Amethyst Intitiative. And it goes without saying that, while we detest drunk driving, we have no connection to MADD or similar groups. But that does not mean we do not agree with the aforementioned organizations on some things.

For best results, please read the intro before proceeding.

The Truth About New Zealand

New Zealand. An island country of 4.3 million people in the southwest Pacific, 1250 miles from Australia. With more sheep than people, they say. What could this tiny, halfway-around-the-world country possibly have to do with the American drinking age debate? Everything, at least according to the pro-21 crowd.

It turns out that New Zealand was the only country in the past decade that has lowered its drinking age, and it did so from 20 to 18 in December 1999. With disastrous results, according to the pro-21 crowd. The same folks that otherwise insist that we can't compare America to other countries with lower drinking ages imply that we would experience disaster as well. Only a few studies have been done to determine the effects of the drinking age change, most notably Kypri et al. (2005) which was co-authored by MADD member Robert Voas from the USA.  When the study came out, leading to news sound bites alleging a dramatic increase in 15-19 year old fatalities resulting from the change, the pro-21 crowd ate it right up without questioning a word of it. But several astute observers did precisely that--they questioned. When the Progressive Party of NZ tried to raise the age back to 20 in 2006 as a result of the moral panic, it fortunately got defeated by a conscience vote after much protest against it. Today in 2009, the drinking age issue is back on the front burner again, in both NZ and the USA. And over here, when the pro-21 crowd is pressed and refuted by those in the movement to lower the drinking age, they like to pull the New Zealand card. And here is where it gets debunked.


Traffic Crashes

The study by Kypri et al. (2005) allegedly found an increase in traffic crashes that involved injuries (not fatalities as is often claimed) among 15-19 year olds since the drinking age was lowered, comparing the four years before to the four years after December 1999. What the media don't mention is that the "increase" was relative to 20-24 year olds, not an absolute increase. There was actually a decrease in all three age groups studied (ages 15-17, 18-19, 20-24), but the 15-19 year old crashes decreased at a slower rate than 20-24 year olds. The original claim that an additional 12 deaths per year resulted from lowering the drinking age was left out of the final paper, probably for good reason. The study also does not control for potential confounders (other than the population of each age group), and we know that such confounders existed during the study period (e.g. increased outlet density, falling alcohol prices, increasingly aggressive advertising/marketing, rise of alcopops). And yes, it is possible for different age groups to be differentially affected by things other than the drinking age, especially the last three things. So one could not really tease out the effect of the law change. The authors assume that teen crashes would have probably dropped even more had the age not been lowered, but that assumption is far from obvious.  Also, according to the International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group, the reporting of nonfatal injury crashes by police had improved since 2001.  Teen fatalities fluctuated a great deal due to their small numbers, but the rates generally remained below their 1999 values from 2000-2008.

Indeed, using 20-24 year olds as a control group is a poor choice. We know that several American studies found that drinking age changes merely shift deaths from one age group to another (see Five Studies that Debunk the Rest for more info), so that could be a reason for the faster decline among 20-24 year olds when those who were 18-19 when the age was lowered turned 20 in 2001-2002. Also, Brownsfield et al. (2003) found that college students already over 20 when the age was lowered drank less immediately after the age-lowering than immediately before. That could be due to not wanting to go to the bar as much due to the resulting influx of younger people, or simply because it would be more crowded. Or they may have felt that their thunder was stolen, so to speak. This (drinking less and staying home more) could also plausibly lead to fewer crashes among those 20 and over. A better choice would have been to use 25-29 year olds as a control group as they would be distant enough to not be affected by the drinking age, but still close enough to be "in the loop" of the latest social trends.

What about the apparent spillover effect on 15-17 year olds, you ask? Interestingly, the "increase" in crashes was even higher for them than for 18-19 year olds, and females were affected more than males in both groups. In America, this would make no sense since crashes involving female drivers are less likely to involve alcohol, and the same is true for 16-17 year olds. So other factors had to be involved. And there is a much more plausible explanation as well.

A little background about New Zealand is necessary to understand all this. First of all, they never really had a true drinking age like we do in America, just a purchase age (we will use the term "drinking age" anyway). They also allow moonshining and drinking in the street. When the age limit was 20, it was poorly enforced, and there were numerous exceptions to the law as well. IDs were not consistently checked, if at all. Back then, it was fairly easy even for 15 and 16 year olds to get into bars and be served. Nod nod wink wink, as long as you behaved yourself we'll let you drink. When the age limit was lowered to 18, however, they really cracked down on bars and restaurants who served to anyone under the new drinking age, but for off-licenses (liquor stores, supermarkets, convenience stores) the enforcement was just as lax as before, which was very lax indeed. Youth under 18 ironically found it harder to get into bars when the age was lowered. So those 15-17 year olds who could no longer go to bars simply went to the stores instead. What they couldn't buy themselves they often got strangers outside to buy for them (furnishing to minors was and remains effectively legal, unless it can be proven who bought it, but even then the penalty is modest). Premixed spirit-based drinks (ready-to-drink, or RTDs), like our alcopops only stronger, were often the drink of choice, as well as cheap liquor. And the already low prices were effectively falling due to the practice of "loss leading," to the point where one could easily get completely wasted for only a few dollars, as RTDs were cheaper than soda or even water. And wasted they got, without the moderating influence of the pub and with little incentive to behave. 

The seeds appear to have been planted in 1989, a full ten years before the drinking age change.  That was the year the Sale of Liquor Act was enacted, which liberalized licensing laws and allowed for 24-hour opening hours.  The number of licensed outlets skyrocketed since then.  Also, NZ began to allow the sale of beer in supermarkets, and legalized Sunday sales of alcohol, on the very same day that the drinking age was lowered.  This further increased the number and density of outlets as well as the resulting availability of booze.

The prexisting trend of increasing binge drinking (which was always worse than in America), combined with the converging trends of falling real alcohol prices, increasing outlet density, 24-hour sales, aggressive marketing and advertising, and the rise of alcopops/RTDs, was a powder keg. Non-alcohol factors, such as faster cars and increasing illegal street racing, may have also played a role in the car crashes as well. If the law (and enforcement) change did anything, it was merely a spark, and rather ironically so at that.

Other effects

Alleged effects of the drinking age change were not limited to motor vehicle crashes. Putative increases in binge drinking, alcohol overdoses, unsafe sex, teen pregnancy, and violent crime have all allegedly been linked to the age-lowering by those who seek to raise the drinking age, using mostly anecdotal evidence. But most of these were either continuations of preexisting secular trends and/or things that could also be explained by other factors (falling alcohol prices relative to income, increasing outlet density, 24-hour sales, aggressive marketing and advertising, and the rise of alcopops/RTDs). These variables are seldom controlled for in the studies. For crime, there were changes in how some crimes were reported and collated since the age was lowered as well, further muddying the waters. Also, many of these effects (such as higher pregnancy rates) were also found for those over 20 as well, and there is a strong correlation between the behavior of adults and that of teens. Indeed, the alleged "effect sizes" of some of these things, though practically small in most cases, are implausibly large given the minimal enforcement of the previous drinking age, and so such effects are likely spurious. The same can be said about the alleged effects on traffic crashes.

Contrary to popular opinion, there was little evidence that 18-19 year olds were a significant source of alcohol for younger teens. But the number one source of alcohol, as it had always been, was parents. Parents were, and still are, the elephant in the room than no one wants to talk about. A pink elephant in this case. Not only do they drink quite a bit themselves, they would also buy large quantities of beer, RTDs, and liquor for 15 year olds, and those 15 year olds would often share it with their younger friends as well. Often unsupervised, in God knows where. Remember that 15 is the driving age in NZ. That means the parents essentially handed them whiskey and car keys. Have fun, don't kill nobody! Look, you simply can't legislate common sense, and raising the drinking age back to 20 would do nothing for this issue.

What to do about it


New Zealand has always had a drinking problem worse than America. There is much debate on what to do about it. But raising the drinking age would likely be fighting fire with gasoline. It would at best be a distraction from the worst drinkers of all--20-29 year olds. Here is what we, the TSAP, recommend instead:

• Raise the tax on all alcoholic beverages, especially RTDs, hard liquor, and cheap beer.
• Set a price floor for alcohol, especially at off-licenses, and ban the practice of "loss leading".
• Restrict alcohol advertising, especially on TV.
• Increase the penalties for drunk driving, and step up enforcement.
• Lower the general blood alcohol limit for driving to 0.05, and the under-20 limit to 0.02 or less (the limits are currently 0.08 and 0.03, respectively).
• Hold parents more accountable for what their kids (under 18) do, especially if the parents supplied them with alcohol beforehand. Duh!
• Put more cops on the street, and get tough on real crime, including drunk violence.  Penalties and enforcement for violent crimes appear to be far too lax in New Zealand.
• Ban drinking in the street by all ages, or allow very limited designated areas to do so.
• Restrict the number and density of alcohol outlets.
• End 24-hour bar-hopping and have a pub closing time of 2 am, and/or a one-way door policy after 1 am. That's evidently when the crazies come out, and the crazy stuff happens.
• Increase alcohol education and public awareness campaigns.
• Do NOT touch the drinking age!  Just enforce it better at off-licenses to increase compliance, and close the existing loopholes on furnishing alcohol to minors. 

These common-sense measures would work wonders, and would affect all ages. Which is exactly what a lot of adults who would rather scapegoat teenagers don't want. Those who insist on raising the drinking age in NZ are so fixated on age that they fail to see the forest for the trees. Gee, who does that sound like? If they are really that concerned about age, than raising the driving age (currently 15) to 16 or 17 is probably the best place to start (along with making the road test harder).

Interestingly, the New Zealand Medical Association agreed in 2006 that the drinking age should remain 18, since there was no clinical evidence that alcohol was more harmful to an 18 year old than a 20 year old.  But they did say that the current drinking age needs to be enforced better, and also called for tighter advertising restrictions on alcohol.

Relevance to America, or Lack Thereof

It goes without saying that while America is not Europe, we are not New Zealand either. As mentioned before, there are several significant differences between the two countries that the pro-21 crowd likes to gloss over. And even there, the effects of the drinking age are likely spurious. So consider this one debunked as well.

QED

Five Studies that Debunk the Rest

Over a hundred studies have been done on the effects of the drinking age, mainly on traffic fatalities. The pro-21 crowd claims that "science" is entirely on their side. However, about half of the studies done suggest otherwise. The best they can honestly say is that the jury is still out. The majority of drinking age studies are either cross-sectional in design or look at time-series data in only one state (or province). Not all studies control for potentially confounding variables or even have a comparison group. A few good ones do, and some of those still find a lifesaving effect for a higher drinking age, but no study is perfect, and there are always unmeasurable variables that are left out due to lack of data. Other problems include the definition of "alcohol-related," poor and widely varying alcohol testing rates, the non-existence of the FARS database before 1975, and policy endogeneity. Even the relatively good studies in favor of a high drinking age can be readily debunked with no more than five other studies, the ones that the pro-21 crowd doesn't want you to see. Consider these studies to be pieces of a puzzle; while they (like all studies) each have their own strengths and weaknesses, they fit together quite well as the strengths of some compensate for the weaknesses of others.

The Furious Five

The five studies that debunk the rest, in chronological order, are:

Males (1986)
Asch and Levy (1987)
Asch and Levy (1990)
Dee and Evans (2001)
Miron and Tetelbaum (2009)

1) Asch and Levy found in their first study that the drinking age had no significant (or even perceptible) effect on either 18-20 year old traffic fatalities or all-ages fatalities, even when single-vehicle nighttime crashes (a proxy for alcohol-involvement) were studied.  It also found no evidence of endogeneity in a state choosing on a lower drinking age. The strengths of this study were that it controlled for several variables, used an error term in the regression, and is one of the few studies that controlled for adult per capita alcohol consumption. The one weakness was that this study was cross-sectional in design and looked only at the year 1978. However, this year was chosen on purpose because all of the drinking age lowering from the early 1970s had occurred years ago, and only a few states had recently raised the drinking age.  In short: the Asch and Levy study was designed to check for long-term effects of the drinking age. It found none.

Interestingly, a 1984 study by Israel Colon did a similar cross-sectional study for the year 1976, and found a positive correlation between the number of single-vehicle fatalities and the drinking age (higher drinking age = more deaths).  The author attributed it to border effects from neighboring states with lower drinking ages (similar to the case of dry counties adjacent to wet ones), but the Asch and Levy study (which controlled for more variables than the Colon one) found no difference in their own results when they eliminated all states for which border effects were potentially important from their regressions.

2) Their second study, longitudinal from 1975-1984, did not show a very conclusive relationship between drinking age and fatality rates. The drinking age oddly enough had opposite effects on single-vehicle (SV) versus single vehicle nighttime fatalities (SVNT). Effects on former had the expected sign, while the latter the effects were statistically insignificant and even had the "wrong" sign. It did, however, show significant effects for experience drinking legally, independent of the drinking age, which greatly diminished the drinking age effect on SV fatalities (often to nonsignificance) and strengthened the wrong-signed effect SVNT fatalites even more in the opposite direction. The more experience, the fewer traffic deaths. Thus, if the drinking age did have any effect, which was still left uncertain, it was mainly to postpone fatalities by 1-3 years rather than cause a net reduction. Strengths were its longitudinal design and inclusion of both state and year "fixed effects," which controlled for state-specific characteristics that did not change significantly with time, and national trends, respectively. The only weakness was the very small number of other control variables in the regressions, but additional ones that were tested (such as the 25-29 year old fatality rate) did not substantively affect the results and were thus dropped for the sake of parsimony.

3) Dee and Evans, using data from 1977-1992, found that, after controlling for several confounders and fixed effects, a drinking age of 21 did reduce fatalities slightly for 18-19 year olds, but increased them for 22-24 year olds, merely shifting the deaths a few years into the future. In other words, no net lifesaving effect, and possibly even a net increase in fatalities. Effects on 16-17 year olds were less clear; a drinking age of 18 (relative to 21) apparently reduced fatalities in this group while a drinking age of 19 increased them. Strengths were its longitudinal design, state and year fixed effects, a few control variables, and the fact that 16-17 year olds and 22-24 year olds were included. The time lag for the effect on 22-24 year olds was taken into account, unlike most other studies that looked at this age group. The only major weakness was not including data for 20 and 21 year olds, especially the latter, which makes the net effect on fatalities less clear (since some other studies suggest a spurt in traffic fatalities at age 21). However, if anything, this omission would attenuate the fatality increase for 21-24 year olds.

4) Mike Males got similar results more than a decade prior, using different methodology and data from 1976-1983, finding that there is not only a "seesaw effect" between age groups regardless of what the drinking age is, but a higher age generally leads to a net increase in fatalities overall. The TSAP speculates that the longer the drunk drivers live, the more of a chance of killing others in a crash. The study compared the changes in the fatal crash ratio (relative to 21-24 year olds) of 18, 19, 20, and 21 year olds in several "change" and "no-change" states that were matched based on various similarities. His methodology has been sharply criticized by many in the pro-21 crowd, but it was not radically different from that used in a pro-21 study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and actually used more statistically reliable measurements.


5) But the final nail in the coffin comes from a study done in 2007 (and published in 2009). Miron and Tetelbaum (2009) found that, after controlling for numerous confounders and fixed effects, as well as state-specific trends, only the first few states to raise the drinking age to 21 voluntarily saw any statistically significant reduction in 18-20 year old fatalities, while many of the coerced adopters saw no change or even increases. And even for the early adopters, there was an apparent rebound effect after the first two years of the higher drinking age. Again, no net lifesaving effect in the long run. They found no statistically significant effects on those over 21, but that could be due to an unaccounted for time lag (when the first 18-19 year olds exposed to a drinking age of 21 turned 21 2-3 years later).

But what about high school kids? Contrary to popular opinion, Miron and Tetelbaum also found little to no effect of the drinking age on reported high school drinking (in Monitoring the Future survey data) as well after controlling for several confounders, and such effects are consistent with underreporting. Even these weak effects were not robust to a change in model specification that restricted the sample to states that raised the drinking age in response to federal coercion. It appears that they are willing to drink regardless, and that the drinking age is irrelevant or even counterproductive. In fact, they found that the higher the drinking age, the more 17 year old (and under) driver fatalities there were! That "negative spillover" effect was also somewhat consistent with Dee and Evans (2001), though it was less clear in the latter.

Most of Miron's statistical models were slightly modified versions of a model used by Dee (1999), in which lifesaving effects were found for the 21 drinking age, but no lifesaving effects were found for the beer tax (in fact they had the "wrong" sign). This is important because Dee (1999) was (until recently) the virtual gold standard for the pro-21 studies as it was a longitudinal study that controlled for several potential confounders, fixed effects, and even state-specific trends. Miron simply took Dee's best model from 1999 and a) added Alaska, Hawaii, and DC to the data, b) added vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and BAC limit variables to the regressions, and c) compared the effects of including or omitting the first few states that raised the age to 21. The drinking age effects were somewhat diminished with the second change and not at all robust to the third change.

Interestingly, the mere addition of Alaska and Hawaii (two of the highest beer tax states) and DC to Dee's best 1999 model made the beer tax suddenly become significant (at the 10% level) and have the correct sign, a drastic change from Dee's results. That is probably because the lower 48 states (except Alabama) and DC have much lower beer taxes (often an order of magnitude lower). It was also worth noting that, in the model that was identical to Dee's except for including AK, HI, and DC, the effect of doubling the beer tax had about twice the apparent effect that raising the drinking age from 18 to 21 did. And that was before the model was changed further in ways to which the drinking age effects were not robust.

QED

Post-Miron Studies

The aforementioned studies do an excellent job of debunking all the pro-21 studies done prior to 2007. A few more studies have been done since then, and it is now up to us to debunk them:

1) Even in some of the studies that do suggest lifesaving effects of a high drinking age, we also learn that the beer tax potentially has a lifesaving effect as well. For example, Ponicki et al. (2007) even found that, while the drinking age does have a small effect, there is a negative "interaction" between the drinking age and the beer tax: the higher one is, the less effective the other is in reducing fatalities. Their model suggested that if the beer tax is high enough, the drinking age becomes irrelevant or even counterproductive. While the study controlled for more variables than most, as well as state and year fixed effects, it did not control for state-specific trends like Miron and Tetelbaum (2009) did. It is also important to note that this study did not adequately test the conclusions made by Miron and Tetelbaum (2009) or Dee and Evans (2001).

2) Lovenheim and Slemrod (2010) also came out with a recent study that looked at the effects of the drinking age itself, as well as "blood borders" (effects of unequal drinking ages across neighboring states). They apparently found small but statistically significant lifesaving effects of a higher drinking age, but the opposite was true in counties within 25 miles of a lower drinking age jurisdiction, for obvious reasons. They imply that if some states were to lower the drinking age, they would hurt others due to drunk driving across borders. That was one excuse the feds gave for their power grab in 1984. Nevermind that the exact same thing happens in dry counties among those 21+, as verified by some studies (Baughman et al., 2001), and yet we do not say that wet counties "hurt" their dry neighbors. Rather, we say that the dry counties are hurting themselves with their provincial and unenforceable policies, and we let them take the consequences of those policies. Futhermore not every study agrees with their conclusion about border effects, such as Kreft and Epling (2007), who found no robust border effects in Michigan counties that bordered on areas with lower drinking ages (Wisconsin, Ohio, and Ontario) back in the 1980s.

The authors were familiar with Miron and Teltelbaum (2009), and even reference that groundbreaking study. Lovenheim and Slemrod's study was very different from the latter, however. Not only was it one of the few studies that looked at border effects in great depth, it also had different methodology. Their fatality measure was the ratio of 18, 19, and 20 year old driver fatalities, analyzed separately, relative to those of 21-25 year olds in one model, and 26+ in another. Two models were done for each, one including border effects, and the other neglecting it. Border effects were localized to those counties 25 miles from the border of a lower drinking age jurisdiction, and were essentially exclusive to the higher drinking age side (similar to what happens dry counties when the drinker drives out sober but drives back home drunk).

However, there are several flaws and caveats. The authors imply that Miron was refuted since Lovenheim still found effects post-1984, but they only restricted the time period studied, not which states were included like Miron did. In fact, they strangely did not even look at what separating out early-adopting (i.e. non-coerced) states would do to the results, even though the gist of Miron was to do exactly that. While Lovenheim and Slemrod point out that most states had drinking ages of 19 or higher by 1984, and that lumping 18-20 year olds together may therefore distort the data, they fail to mention that Miron tests the specific effects of MLDA19, MLDA20, and MLDA21 relative to MLDA18, and there were still some states that were 18 until 1987. So this is essentially a non-issue. Effects of the drinking age were robust to neglecting border effects, and in fact roughly identical in both models, so Miron's neglect of border effects was also not substantive.

Most importantly, Lovenheim's models using 21-25 and 26+ control groups differed in terms of drinking age effects, and the differences are very telling indeed. The effect of drinking age on fatality rates of 18-19 year olds was twice as strong in magnitude when the 21-25 control group was used compared with using 26+. For 20 year olds, the difference was smaller but still visible. Hmmm...how could that be? Though glossed over, a stronger relative effect with respect to 21-25 year olds than with 26+ year olds implies that some (if not all) of the reduced 18-20 year old traffic deaths were likely just postponed by a few years, Dee and Evans (or Asch and Levy) style. A true net reduction should not have such differential effects. This possibility was unfortunately ignored by the authors, so the net effect is still unclear in this study. Thus Lovenheim and Slemrod fail to knock down the aforementioned studies.

Finally, it is rather interesting that border effects involving the Canadian border were found to have the opposite sign compared with those of state borders. This led the authors to admit (in a roundabout way) that the counties in upstate New York and Vermont, which were known to beef up roving patrols and sobriety checkpoints close to the Canadian border at a time when the border was not much more protected than state borders, found a way to more than counteract the apparent border effects. Put another way, this actually pulls the rug out from under the strongest argument for states being coerced to have a uniform drinking age of 21. States who refuse to recognize 18-20 year olds as full adults, but whose neighbors are intent on doing just that, take note. It just might save some lives.

3) Fell et al. (2008) also came out with a recent pro-21 study, and it has been hailed by some as the one study that was finally able to tease out the effect of the drinking age alone, and settle the debate once and for all. Red flag statements aside, this study by MADD member James Fell still suffered from some serious issues. The study was divided into two parts. The first part looked at the effect of the drinking age from 1982-1990, using the ratio of alcohol-positive to alcohol-negative fatal-crash under-21 drivers as the fatality variable. States with a drinking age of 21 since before 1982 were compared with states that did not. While modest but statistically significant effects were found, even when numerous variables were controlled for, there are some caveats that were glossed over. First, the apparent convergence of the fatality ratios in the two groups did not occur until 1988, with the gap persisting even in 1987, even though most of the age-raising occurred in 1984-1986, and only a handful of states changed ages in 1987-1988. Until 1988, the ratios declined at roughly the same rate, albeit a gap between them that persisted until then. The gap should have begun narrowing since 1984 if the drinking age effects were real. In fact, in 1990, re-divergence began despite no change in drinking age after 1988, and the percent change from 1982-1990 was not dramatically different between groups.  Secondly, the effects of a 0.08 BAC limit and automatic license revocation laws had much stronger magnitudes than those of the 21 drinking age. Thirdly, alcohol testing rates were abysmal and erratic before 1990, which could bias the results in either direction. Remember too that "alcohol-positive" means any alcohol (even 0.01 BAC) was present in the driver's body, not necessarily that the crash was alcohol-caused. Fourthly, beer taxes and seat belt laws were not controlled for. And finally, it goes without saying that since it did not compare the post 1984 change states to the early MLDA 21 adopters between 1982-1984, it does not successfuly refute (or even address) Miron and Tetelbaum's findings. Also, it does not even broach the issue of shifting deaths to 21-24 year olds, so it does not refute Males, Asch and Levy, or Dee and Evans.

The second part of Fell's study is sometimes hailed as a strong point in that it includes "modern" data, but upon closer examination it actually contains the study's deepest weakness. It looks at the same under-21 alcohol-related fatality ratio as above, only this time as a percentage of all-ages fatalities, over the period 1998-2004. The effects of the two "core" drinking age laws (purchase and possession under 21) and 14 ancillary laws (anti-fake ID, keg registration, furnishing to minors, social host laws, graduated driver licensing with nighttime restrictions, zero tolerance, use and lose, and others), and the relative "strengths" of those laws, on fatalities was examined. The only one that had any significant and negative effect on under-21 fatalities, relative to over-21 fatalities, was the anti-fake ID law, a law that all 50 states have had since before 1998 but varied in strength from state to state. All of the other laws, even the two core laws, were either insignificant or even perverse, calling into question whether these or even the 21 drinking age itself is still useful or relevant today. Since drivers under 18 were included in the under 21 group, the fake ID law's small effect could very well have been driven by such youth since they would be just as affected by this kind of law if not more so. Or it could simply be a proxy for something else that was not observable (the same could also be said for the drinking age itself, by the way). The authors try to explain away the apparently null or perverse effects of the other laws by the way the "strengths" were coded as well as the fact that this part of the study was cross-sectional due to data problems for enactment dates, but one can just as easily make the exact same argument about the fake ID laws as well. Far from settling the issue, this study acutally opens up a huge can of worms. So consider this one debunked as well. The bigger they are, the harder they Fell.

UPDATE:  Fell et al. (2009) also did another, more recent study that looked this time at both the 21 drinking age as well as a few ancillary laws (zero tolerance, use and lose, graduated driver license night restrictions, and keg registration) that were evaluated longitudinally, in contrast to their 2008 largely cross-sectional evaluation of ancillary laws that found no significant effects for laws other than anti-fake ID laws.  Their longitudinal study did find a significant downward effect of the "core" 21 drinking age laws and smaller but statistically significant effects of use and lose laws and zero tolerance laws on the ratio of alcohol-related to non-alcohol traffic fatalities among 16-20 year olds, but keg registration unexpectedly had the opposite effect, acutally increasing this ratio.  That result is surprising since outdoor keggers frequently involve at least someone driving when they shouldn't be on the road.  Thus, if one believes the study's conclusion that the 21 drinking age and use and lose laws both save hundreds of lives each year, you'd also have to believe that keg laws kill people as well, and that their proponents have blood on their hands.  In addition, though the model was somewhat improved, the study still suffers from many of the same shortcomings as the authors' previous study, and cannot be said to truly refute Miron and Tetelbaum and the other Furious Five studes.

QED

Intro, 21 Reasons, and FAQ

It's time to tell the truth. The 21 drinking age is the greatest alcohol policy failure since Prohibition. And there are striking parallels between the two.

It has been 21 years since the last two states (South Dakota and Wyoming) raised the drinking age to 21 in 1988, and a quarter century since the federal highway funding power grab of 1984 began. Initiated by MADD, spurred on by disgruntled members of Congress, reluctantly signed into law by Reagan, bowed down to by sellout state governors and legislators, and upheld by the highest court in the land, it appears to be all but cast in stone. But a relatively quiet movement to reverse this failed (ig)noble experiment is gaining momentum with each passing year.

And what has depriving more than 12 million legal adults of sovereignty over their own bodies and minds given us after more than two decades? Not much good it seems. And unfortunately a lot of unintended consequences such as loss of social cohesion, an increase in truly dangerous drinking, and even more ancillary laws to prop up the failed policy. Arbitrary and coercive imposition of order eventually and inevitably leads to escalation of chaos. The Law of Eristic Escalation in action. 

Nevermind that 21-24 year olds are significantly more likely to cause alcohol-related traffic fatalities, are the most overrepresented in such fatalities, and are more likely to drive drunk, than 18-20 year olds.  And this was true even when 18-20 year olds were allowed to drink legally, and remains true in countries like Canada where they still are.  But tyranny is always whimsical.

There is a lot of junk science and misinformation out there about the drinking age, and this blog is designed to debunk it all. Take a look at the studies the pro-21 crowd doesn't want you to see, discussed here on this blog for your convenience. You'll find that the idea that there was a net lifesaving effect of raising the drinking age to 21 is questionable at best and most likely spurious.

We do not have a "teen drinking problem," we have an American drinking problem. And we need an American solution to solve it. A solution based on sound science and civil rights, not junk science, scapegoating, and tyranny.

The True Spirit of America Party (TSAP) believes that the drinking age should be lowered to 18, with 18 year olds having the same rights that 21 year olds have now, period.  This would best be combined with a hike in the beer tax to $2.00/gallon, and the increased revenue used to fund alcohol education, treatment, and DUI enforcement. In addition, laws against drunk driving would be strengthened and enforced better, and licenses would be easier to lose at any age for misbehavior on the road.

TOP 21 REASONS WHY WE SHOULD LOWER THE DRINKING AGE, PREFERABLY TO 18:

 21) Legal age 21 simply doesn't work. The odds of being busted are about 1 in 500. The majority of 18-20 year olds currently drink, and 90% of the population will drink at least once before turning 21. It simply cannot be consistently enforced, only arbitrarily. Even 8th graders (13 year olds!) can get their hands on alcohol, and more easily than even cigarettes, which have an age limit 18 in 46 states (and often poorly enforced).  And the average age at first drink actually dropped from 16.6 in 1980 to 16.2 in 2002.
20) Legal age 21 is such a failure that it requires more and more ancillary laws (e.g. dram shop, social host liability, use and lose, keg registration, etc.) to prop it up, creating their own set of problems.
19) Legal age 21 is a distraction from the irresponsible drinking of older adults, and helps foster denial of such problems.
18) Legal age 21 requires violation of the Constitution (warrantless searches, internal possession laws, forced chemical tests, and even entrapment) in order to enforce it sufficiently.
17) Legal age 21 creates excessive liability for both adults and "minors" alike.
16) Legal age 21 breeds disrespect for law and authority.
15) Legal age 21 creates 12 million second-class citizens.
14) Legal age 21 unjustly punishes all under 21 for the actions of the few.
13) The USA is the only developed, non-Muslim country with a drinking age that high.
12) Legal age 21 is interpreted and enforced so pharisaically in some places that many underage drinkers are afraid to get medical help for alcohol overdoses, and too many people die that way.
11) Legal age 21 is the Law of Eristic escalation in action. Imposition of order eventually leads to escalation of chaos.
10) You don't swat a fly with a sledgehammer.
9) Legal age 21 creates "forbidden fruit."
8) Legal age 21 turns alcohol into a "gateway" drug.
7) Legal age 21 creates big profits for the fake ID industry, which supports organized crime and even terrorism.
6) Legal age 21 forces drinking underground, leading to more dangerous and/or deadly drinking.
5) Attempting to enforce legal age 21 is a huge waste of resources that could be better spent on education, treatment, and DUI enforcement, which are currently under-resourced.
4) Legal age 21 blurs the line between responsible and irresponsible drinking, and even encourages the latter at the expense of the former. Stupid drinking is common partly because intelligent drinking is illegal.
3) Legal age 21 makes criminals out of otherwise law-abiding citizens.
2) Because 18-20 year olds are adults. And adults are sovereign in body and mind, and shouldn't have to protected from themselves. That alone is reason enough.
1) It's a cliche, but if you're old enough to go to war, you're old enough to go to the bar. Anything else is un-American.

Many of these are the same reasons America decided to repeal Prohibition in 1933. How quickly we forget the hard lessons of that unfortunate era. When you criminalize normative drinking, you inevitably normalize dangerous drinking. And we are all paying a heavy price for it.

WHAT CAN YOU DO LEGALLY AT 18 IN AMERICA?

• Go to war and die for your country
• Vote for the most powerful person in the world
• Run for some political offices in some states
• Drive a car, truck, or motorcycle
• Drive a nuclear-powered submarine (in the Navy)
• Get married without parental consent
• Have custody of a child
• Consent to sex in all 50 states and DC
• Have an abortion without parental consent
• Enter into legally binding contracts
• Work in almost any hazardous occupation
• Pay income taxes
• Get a credit card and borrow money
• Get piercings and tattoos
• Be tried as an adult for all crimes in all 50 states and DC
• Go to adult prison in all states
• Be executed in states that have the death penalty
• Serve on a jury
• Sue and be sued
• Live on one's own
• Be evicted by one's parents in most states
• Get one's plug pulled in most states
• Commit assisted suicide (in Oregon)
• Join a cult
• Skydive, hang-glide, and engage in other extreme sports
• Hunt with dangerous weapons, even unsupervised
• Carry concealed weapons in some states
• Buy shotguns and rifles
• Sell guns at gun shows in states that have them
• Buy and sell chainsaws, knives, boxcutters, razorblades, and swords
• Buy and sell fireworks in some states
• Buy and sell toxic chemicals
• Buy and sell cigarettes and other tobacco products
• Buy and sell questionable "dietary supplements"
• Buy, sell, and star in pornography (most states)
• Buy and sell Robitussin, Sudafed, Benadryl, and other potentially hazardous drugs without a prescription
• Gamble in many states (lottery, bingo, stock market, and even casinos in some states)
• Sell your body (in Nevada) or soul (anywhere)
• Be a human guinea pig
• Own real estate in most states
• Sell alcoholic beverages
• You can even own a bar in some states...

But God forbid you legally order a beer! Honestly, does that really make any sense at all?

THE TOBACCO MODEL WORKS

A quiet revolution has occurred in America in the last 40 years or so. Since 1969, adult smoking has plummeted by more that 50%, and the same happened for teen smoking since 1976. The exact year it peaked was accurately predicted by the tobacco companies. Smoking rates of all ages are now at an all-time low since they began being accurately measured. Even the brief increase in teen smoking in the first half of 1990s was in 30-day prevalence surveys, and heavy daily smoking had dropped even faster over the years than smoking in general. Now that's a great American success story!

What were the factors that caused this monumental change? Americans became more health conscious since the 1970s, of course, as also reflected in the decline in per capita alcohol consumption since 1980. The only major public policy measures done were education, taxation, and advertising restrictions.  Most notably, America did not raise the smoking age to 21, not even in a single state. The age limit for cigarettes is 18 in 46 states, and is often poorly enforced. Yet alcohol is easier for 13-16 year olds to get than cigarettes, go figure. And for high school seniors, the decline in smoking at all in the past 30 days was somewhat faster (in the long run) than the decline in "binge" drinking (5 or more drinks in an occasion).

We clearly have a lot to learn from this model of regulation. It seems that both hard (e.g. taxation) and soft (e.g. education) policy measures that target all ages work a lot better than scapegoating young people for adult problems.

FREQUENTLY ANNOYING QUESTIONS (FAQ)

Q1) You gotta be insane to want to lower the drinking age! If anything, we should raise it. Do you really want to see more teenagers getting killed on the highways? Because that's what would happen, all else being equal.
A1) No, we don't want to see more teenagers getting killed, on or off the highways. And who says all else has to be equal, anyway?  Even in the worst-case scenario, we doubt that there would be any increase in fatalities in the long run. But just in case there's a short-term increase, all else being equal, we have built-in safeguards to our alcohol policy (raising the beer tax, increased education, cracking down on drunk driving, etc.) to prevent this from occurring. We could also lower the age gradually as well. Thus the net effect of our policy will likely be death reduction, not increase. And what sane person would be against that?
Your fears are based on junk science and misinformation. See question 2 for more information.
Q2) Studies have proven that the 21 drinking age law saves lives on the highways. Science speaks for itself. Why would you want to get rid of it?
A2) Which studies are you referring to? The ones quoted by MADD ad nauseum? Not all studies agree on the matter. Anyone who says "science" is entirely on one side of an issue should make our collective antennae go up immediately. In fact the studies are almost evenly split on the matter.
Take a look at the following studies that debunk the myth of 21 saving lives:

1. Males (1986)
2. Asch and Levy (1987)
3. Asch and Levy (1990)
4. Dee and Evans (2001)
5. Miron and Tetelbaum (2007)

Asch and Levy found in their first study that the drinking age had no significant (or even perceptible) effect on either 18-20 year old traffic fatalities or all-ages fatalities. Even when single-vehicle nighttime crashes were studied. Their second study did not show a conclusive relationship between drinking age and fatality rates. Dee and Evans found that, after controlling for several confounders and fixed effects, a drinking age of 21 did reduce fatalities slightly for 18-19 year olds, but increased them for 22-24 year olds, merely shifting the deaths a few years into the future. No net lifesaving effect. Males got similar results using different methodology, finding that there is not only a "seesaw effect" between age groups, but a higher age leads to a net increase in fatalities overall. The TSAP speculates that the longer the drunk drivers live, the more of a chance of killing others in a crash. And Miron and Tetelbaum found that, after controlling for numerous confounders and fixed effects, only the first few states to raise the drinking age to 21 voluntarily saw any statistically significant reduction in 18-20 year old fatalities, while many of the coerced adopters saw no change or even increases. And even for the early adopters, there was a rebound after the first two years of the higher drinking age. Again, no net lifesaving effect in the long run. These studies essentially prove the Law of Eristic Escalation.
But what about high school kids? Contrary to popular opinion, Miron and Tetelbaum also found little to no effect of the drinking age on high school drinking as well after controlling for confounders. It appears that they are willing to drink regardless, and that the drinking age is irrelevant or even counterproductive. In fact, they found that the higher the drinking age, the more 17 year old (and under) driver fatalities there were!
Still don't believe us? Even in some of the studies that do suggest lifesaving effects, we also learn that the beer tax has a lifesaving effect as well. Ponicki et al (2008) even found that, while the drinking age does have a small effect, there is a negative "interaction" between the drinking age and the beer tax: the higher one is, the less effective the other is in reducing fatalities. Their model suggested that if the beer tax is high enough, the drinking age becomes irrelevant or even counterproductive. The TSAP recommends raising the combined federal and state beer taxes to $2.00/gallon in conjunction with lowering the drinking age to 18. Another reason to take a chill pill.
Q3) How about making it so 18-20 year olds can get a provisional "drinking license" or "learner's permit" after taking an alcohol education course? That way it will be like driving, and those who abuse the privilege will lose it. Surely that would be better that letting them have full drinking rights at 18?
A3) The TSAP does not support the idea of a "drinking license" or "drinking learner's permit" of any kind for legal adults. We believe that 18 year olds, as full legal adults, should have all the same rights that 21 year olds currently have. And yes, unlike driving on public property, sovereignty over one's own body is a right, not a privilege. And the power to license a right is the power to take it away, often arbitrarily.
Ok you say, but what if all adults were required to have a license to drink? And what else should we license? Breeding? Leaving one's house? And there's the slippery slope. Furthermore, no country in history has ever had anything like that before--it is a completely unprecedented, ivory tower idea. And a huge can of worms. Do we really want to turn drinking into the same kind of rite of passage that driving is? How would we possibly be able to enforce it if we can't even enforce the policy we have now? Enter Big Brother.
As for alcohol education, it would have to begin a LOT earlier than 18 to be effective. Parents are the ideal alcohol educators, and they should thus be allowed to give their kids alcohol as they see fit to introduce them to it gradually before they turn 18. That's what is done in Europe, and it appears to work fine. But that would obviously not be the case for everyone, or even most kids, so the schools have to step up to the plate as well to provide honest and accurate alcohol education (without handing out booze of course). And such education would be funded by the increased beer tax we propose. Those who say education doesn't work are basing their judgments on the current failed temperance-oriented approach.
As for the "abuse it and lose it" idea, a more libertarian alternative would be the "blacklist." All legal adults will be given the benefit of the doubt, and allowed to drink by default without having to prove anything. But those of ANY age who are convicted of drunk driving, drunk violence, or buying alcohol for minors (under 18) will lose the right to purchase alcohol for a fixed period of time in addition to other penalties. Their names will be put on a list, available to every bar and store that sells alcohol in the state. Their driver's licenses or state ID cards would be replaced with new ones that say in red letters, "Do not serve alcohol, under penalty of law." Those who knowingly buy for such individuals would face the same penalties as buying for minors, including getting "blacklisted" themselves. Few deterrents are greater than not being able to go to the bar when all your friends can, and having to explain the fact to them.
Finally, part of America's drinking problem is that we make such a big deal about alcohol, to the point where we fetishize it as some kind of magical talisman. More so than most other developed countries, for sure, and it is partly due to our drinking age being ridiculously high. That is true whether we condemn all drinking or praise excessive drinking, and unfortunately America does both. And a drinking license of any kind would likely intensify this attitude toward alcohol that can only be called strange by international standards.
While we agree with Dr. John McCardell that some "mechanism other than moral suasion" for regulating alcohol use is necessary, we think the best way is to use the same strategies used on tobacco that cut the smoking rates in half since 1976. These include taxation, education, and perhaps advertising restrictions. For alcohol, of course, cracking down on drunk driving is an integral part of the strategy as well. We feel that doing these things in conjuction with a drinking age of 18 is much more pragmatic than any other alcohol policy proposed. The American drinking problem necessitates broad-based, proven solutions for all ages, not specious ones like licenses for young adults that put drinking on even more of a pedestal than Legal Age 21 does.
Q4) But America is not Europe. We got a lot of problems with alcohol, and lowering the drinking age will just make them worse. They may very well be able to handle it just fine over there, but we can't.
A4) True, America is not Europe, but we're not New Zealand either. We have no illusions that lowering the drinking age will magically transform our drinking culture overnight into one like France. It should be noted that that line of reasoning is also a straw man. It does not follow that things will necessarily get worse by legalizing what most 18-20 year olds already do illegally, and the burden of proof is on those who assert this. Fortunately, we have a yardstick for what would likely have happened had we not raised the drinking age in the 1980s, and we need only look north to see it. It's called Canada. They have a similar drinking culture and drinking history to the United States, and they are a car culture like us as well. And they saw an equivalent alcohol-related fatality decline as us, without raising the drinking age to 21. Their civilization did not collapse. Australia saw an even faster decline, and their drinking age has been 18 since the early 1970s. And they party pretty hard down under, no doubt about that.  But they're tougher than we are on drunk driving. And in both countries, the drunk driving fatality rate is about half of what ours is.
By your pseudo-logic, ALL Americans should be banned from drinking. After all, a 30 year old driver is more likely to be involved in an alcohol-related fatal crash than an 18 year old. A 38 year old is about the same. And a 21 year old is twice as likely!
Q5) But we don't have the public transport infrastructure needed to handle all those 18 year olds drinking legally. Nor could we afford it. What makes you think they won't drive drunk given the lack of options?
A5) And you think Canada (see above) or Australia does? Do you think we have the infrastructure needed to handle all those 21+ year olds drinking legally, which greatly outnumber America's 10 million 18-20 year olds and are more likely to have cars? Or all those under 21 who currently drink illegally as we speak? Come on now! And a lack of public transit options is no excuse to drive drunk and endanger the lives of innocent people. Get a designated driver, call a cab, or even walk if you have to.  Or stay home.  Or don't drink--nobody's got a gun to your head. And why punish all for the actions of the few?
(As an aside, you should also read point #1 of the TSAP platform if you are as interested in improving public transportation as we are.)
Q6) But wouldn't a higher beer tax be punishing the moderate drinking majority for the actions of alcohol abusers?
A6) The tax burden (as a percentage of income) would fall hardest on the heaviest drinkers, as it should. They are the ones who generate the largest social costs, so they should pay more. Moderate drinkers would not be hurt by paying an extra dollar on a six-pack, but someone who has a six-pack every day would be set back a bit. True, the majority of drinkers drink in moderation, but the majority of alcohol is consumed by heavy drinkers. 20% or the population consumes about 80% of the alcohol. Partly because booze is so cheap in America compared to other countries. Numerous studies have shown that demand for alcohol, and its attendant social problems, is inversely related to price. In other words, unlike the 21 drinking age, a higher beer tax would encourage moderation, not punish it. If you can't afford to get trashed on a regular basis, maybe you should cut down.
Q7) The list of things that you can do at 18, albeit a long one, is irrelevant to the debate over the drinking age. Furthermore, for more than half of those things, mixing them with alcohol is downright dangerous, so banning 18-20 year olds from drinking is entirely rational.
A7) How is it irrelevant? So you're implying that it is logically consistent to allow someone to engage in numerous activities that are significantly more dangerous and/or require more maturity and responsibility than drinking, but to forbid that same person to drink period? Thought so. That's an easy way to dance around the fact that, for better or worse, our society set 18 as the age of adulthood. You can't just arbitrarily say that 18-20 year olds are adults only when it is convenient for the older and more powerful adults in our society. If they are not adults, then they should not go to war, be executed, be tried as adults, work in dangerous jobs, etc. You can't have it both ways. Either 18-20 year olds are adults, or they are not.
As for mixing alcohol with driving/guns/chainsaws/work/etc., remember that mixing them is already illegal for anyone to do, or at the very least will expose one to serious liability. It is just as dangerous for a 21 year old to mix these things, and our society does not prohibit them from drinking period like for 18-20 year olds. It is a separate issue altogether, and should be dealt with specifically. Some things just don't mix, but it does NOT follow that any of those things in isolation should be prohibited. Otherwise, cars would be outlawed. If anything, our country has it backwards. Many other developed countries allow teens to legally drink several years prior to being allowed to do a lot of the things on the list.
Being sovereign in body and mind, legal adults of all ages are by default given the benefit of the doubt that they have the mental capacity to make their own decisions unless they are individually proven otherwise. Otherwise the age of majority, and indeed adulthood itself, is meaningless.
Q8) We tried lowering the drinking age in 30 states the 1970s, and alcohol-related fatalities went up among teenagers as a result. So much so that they had to raise the drinking age later. What makes you think that won't happen again?
A8) First of all, we don't really know if that statement is even true to begin with, and we probably never will. Only a few decent-quality studies examined the years 1970-1975, the years in which 29 of the 30 states lowered the drinking age (Oklahoma did in 1976). The Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), which gives detailed reports about traffic fatalities, was not even created until 1975, and state-level data were not available through that system until 1976. So any conclusions drawn from state-level data for 18-20 year olds before 1976 is questionable at best. And any "alcohol-related fatality" data before 1982 is unreliable since FARS did not make this distinction until that year, and a state that tested even 50% of fatal crash drivers for alcohol was considered stellar back then. Garbage in, garbage out.
From 1970-1975, any alleged increase in fatalities was imperceptible in the aggregate data. Using data from the National Safety Council, national 15-24 year old fatalities peaked in 1969, then declined sharply until 1975. From 1976-1980, fatalities rose somwhat, and declined from then on. The same was true for 18-20 year olds after 1976, when that group was separated out by FARS and the two groups are highly correlated. But the increase in the late 70s also occurred in states like California, which kept their drinking age at 21 throughout.
So all state-level data for 18-20 year olds before 1976 must be gleaned from sources other than FARS, and some states had data problems for this period. And here's the grain of truth of it all. It is true that some states that lowered their drinking ages saw increases in reported 18-20 year old fatalities from 1970-1975. But other states that lowered their drinking ages saw either no significant change or sharp decreases in such deaths. And North Dakota saw an increase despite keeping their drinking age at 21, while South Dakota (who lowered their drinking age from 19 to 18) saw one of the largest decreases of any state. Thus, the state-level data are completely patternless. Clearly, other factors were involved. And any increases are not clear as to whether they reflect true fatality increases or simply changes in how fatal crashes were reported.
Regardless of what happened or didn't happen in the 1970s, it is essentially irrelevant today. Back then, drinking ages were lowered against a backdrop of falling real alcohol prices, higher adult per capita alcohol consumption than today (and rising), permissive and toothless DUI laws, social acceptability of drunk driving, no seat belt laws, ignorance about the risks of alcohol, and a generally cavalier attitude toward safety. The term "air bag" meant a person who talked too much. The term "designated driver" was not even in our vocabulary until the 1980s. Drunk driving was not just tolerated back then, it was expected of you if you were the least drunk person in the group (to drive everyone else home). Needless to say, things are very different today. So it's comparing apples and oranges. And your question about the 1970s is therefore academic.
Q9) But alcoholism rates will skyrocket! The earlier you drink, the more likely you will become an alcoholic.
A9) There is no significant correlation between a country's legal drinking age and its alcoholism rate. If anything, it is slightly positive rather than negative, but that could be due to reverse causality. Interestingly, in the United States in the late 1970s, states with higher drinking ages had lower adult per capita alcohol consumption rates, but higher rates of alcoholism. So your claim has no basis whatsoever.
On the individual level, a correlation has been found in this country between decreasing age at first drink and increasing risk of later alcoholism or alcohol abuse, but a causal relationship has not been proven. It may simply be a "marker" for increased risk, not a cause. The correlation greatly weakens when several confounding variables are accounted for, and any remaining risk is small enough to be due to possible residual confounding or reporting bias. Even if the statistics are taken at face value, the real concern should be for those who start before the age of 15, not 18 year olds, who do not differ significantly from 21 year olds when confounders are controlled for. Interestingly, this correlation is not observed (or the reverse is true) in many European countries, where most people begin drinking from a very early age and it is no big deal when done in moderation (unlike in America, where any teen drinking is considered "deviant" but adult heavy drinking is glorified). So it is more likely a social phenomenon than a pharmacological one.
Even if it was true, that same logic could in principle be used to ban all men from drinking, since they are four times more likely to become alcoholics that women.
Q10) Science has shown that the brain is not fully developed until 21. From a public health perspective, we can't afford to risk alcohol-related damage to developing brains by lowering the drinking age.
A10) Actually, the latest studies suggest that the brain is not "fully developed" until 25. Maybe even later--remember that until recently we used to think the brain was fully developed before adolescence even began. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 10 years they say 30, and eventually say that it never really stops changing (in fact, we already know that some parts, like the corpus callosum, continue growing into the forties). So 21 is a completely arbitrary drinking age. But let's assume you're right for a moment and that the process is complete at 21. So you're basically saying that young people should wait until their brains are fully developed before destroying them? And that public health trumps civil rights? Thought so.
These fears are unfounded. The idea that drinking before 21 is somehow more harmful than drinking after 21 has no real scientific basis. The only human study on the matter that controlled for amount of drinking and number of years drinking (Demir et al. 2002) showed no differences in long-term cognitive impairments between those who began drinking before 21 and those who began after, even for heavy drinkers. All other human studies either lacked an over-21 comparison group and/or focused on truly heavy drinkers who began drinking much earlier than 18. While truly heavy drinking for prolonged periods is indeed harmful to the brain for anyone, age appears to have very little to do with it. So consider this one debunked as well.
Furthermore, it is safe to say that while the 18 year old brain is still not 100% finished developing, it is very close, and any further development is really just the last finishing touches. Adolescence is a period of major brain development, but the most critical development occurs before 18, chiefly between 12 and 15. So critical, in fact, that intelligence stops increasing and levels off at 16, and even "executive functioning" levels off for the most part at 17. Interestingly, the executive functioning center of the brain (the prefrontal cortex) reaches its maximum weight around 13 and actually shrinks from then until the early 20s. Changes that occur after 15 are primarily pruning away the excess neurons (gray matter) and increasing the efficiency connections by adding white matter (myelin) for insulation.
Honestly, think about what the world would be like if the pro-21 crowd was right. We have entire countries that begin drinking way before 21, often in their early or mid-teens. In some of these countries, the majority drink on a daily or near-daily basis. And an entire generation of Americans in 38 states and DC was allowed to drink legally before 21 back in the 1970s and early 1980s. In 11 states and DC, even earlier generations did as well. Surely they would all be brain-damaged alcoholic felons by now if the pro-21 argument was sound. The fact that they're not is reason to take a chill pill. But please drink in moderation if you choose to drink, regardless of age.
Q11) OK, I see your point on lowering the drinking age. I took my chill pill. But wouldn't 19 be better than 18 to keep it away from the high school kids?
A11) Lowering it to 19 (or even 20) is a step in the right direction, and the TSAP would not object to any stepping stone that leads to a drinking age of 18. But it would still be a year higher than the age of majority in 47 states. And the TSAP believes in treating 18 year olds as full adults. A drinking age of 19 would not be fair to those 18 year olds who have already graduated. And 19 is an awkward age to begin drinking legally (though not as awkward as 21 of course). Either way, alcohol would be just as illegal for those 17 and under.
As for high school kids, remember that 10th graders (and even 8th graders) right now can get alcohol more easily than cigarettes (which are 18 in 46 states, 19 in the rest). It is hard to imagine booze being any more available in high school than it is now. But the current underground supply networks for high schoolers are highly unpredictable (feast or famine), and so they do not know when they will get the next opportunity to drink, so they are more likely to really overindulge. With often dangerous consequences. And some 17 year olds would be willing wait a year to stay within the law if the drinking age was 18, rather than be asked wait four years and saying why bother waiting even a minute? So even if alcohol did become slightly more available to 16 and 17 year olds under a drinking age of 18, it would hardly be an unmitigated evil. 18 is low enough to enable high school seniors to learn to drink in a safer environment before going to college, while it is still high enough to not make it significantly easier for, say, 13 year olds to get. And those under 19 tend to have more parental supervision than those over 19.
Also, remember that the lower the drinking age is, the easier it is to enforce. Finite law enforcement resources need not be spread so thin trying to do the impossible and keep 18-20 year olds from drinking. They could focus more on the younger kids instead, and better monitor their behavior as a result.
Still worried? We could always keep the purchase age at 21 (or 19 or 20) specifically for kegs, cases, and other bulk quantities of alcohol despite lowering the general purchase age to 18. For example, we could have it that if you're 18, you may buy no more than an 18 pack of beer in any one transaction. More than that and you'll need to find a surrogate buyer just like you do now. This could be complemented by requiring any sale of more than 216 ounces of beer to take place at a beer distributor (as opposed to a supermarket or corner store) for all ages, and have such distributors close at 10 pm or earlier. That way, 18-20 year olds could legally drink like 21+ year olds do now, but we can guarantee there would be no resultant increase in the number of high school keg parties. They may even decrease since at least some seniors over 18 would likely prefer to go to the bar instead, thus reducing the demand for those crazy keggers.
Q12) How about it be 18 for beer, 21 for liquor? Many states used to have that back in the day. Seems like a good compromise, right?
A12) It's a good start, and the TSAP would not object to that as a stepping stone. But we never really understood the point of that since you can get just as drunk on one as you can on the other. Alcohol is alcohol is alcohol, period. In fact, beer is the drink of choice for drunk drivers ("Hey I can drive fine, it's only beer"), and when behind the wheel it is just as dangerous as liquor. Even states that sell low-alcohol "3.2 beer," such as Oklahoma, find that it is disproportionally implicated in alcohol-related fatalities relative to stronger beverages. A split age may even perpetuate the false sense of security about driving after drinking "just" beer.
Q13) What about blood borders? Don't states that lower their drinking ages hurt their neighbors by creating an incentive for their neighbors to drive drunk across state lines?
A13) Although not all studies agree on whether they are even significant, in the 1980s, "blood borders" was one of the excuses given for the feds forcing states to raise their drinking ages to 21 to create a uniform drinking age. While a uniform drinking age does reduce one potential incentive to drive drunk, the same would be true for a uniform drinking age of 18. Simply forbid states from having a drinking age higher than the age of majority or the age for being tried as adults (unlikely to be raised above 18), whichever is lower, if they want full highway funding. Problem solved. Other alternatives that do not violate states' rights include making drunk driving across state lines a federal crime, or simply increasing roving patrols or sobriety checkpoints near the blood borders. The latter worked wonders in New York and Vermont (which border on Quebec), and border-related fatalities are currently very low as a result. Nowadays with all the concern over drunk driving, blood borders should not be as much of an issue. Drinking and drunk driving are two separate issues and should not be conflated.
An absolute last resort, of course, could be having a higher purchase age specifically for nonresidents of a state (i.e. having an out of state ID) unless they could prove that they are also not residents of border states with a higher drinking age, and/or that they are students in the state (show college ID) or live on a military base in the state (show military ID). That is what Wisconsin did half a century ago, so there is a precedent. West Virginia did something similar in the 1980s as well. And it does not violate states' rights either. If it sounds tough to enforce, remember that the 21 drinking age is just as tough to enforce as well, if not tougher.
In reality, blood borders between higher drinking age states and lower drinking age states are really no worse than the blood borders between dry counties and wet counties. In fact, the latter is worse since it involves a much larger percentage of the counties' population (everyone over 21 versus 18-20 year olds). And yet we let counties decide for themselves whether to be wet or dry. You never see dry counties attempting to force their wet neighbors to go dry (in fact some states actually forbid dry counties). Nor do we say that wet counties are "hurting" their dry neighbors; rather, we see the dry counties as hurting themselves. That's exactly how we should view it on the state level. Like dry counties, states that refuse to recognize 18-20 year olds as full adults would catch the brunt of any cross-border fatalities, and they would reap what they sow. And it is their responsibility, to protect their own citizens, especially ones not yet considered full adults (paternalism works both ways). It's the price we pay for federalism. Instead, they whined to the feds to protect them from the logical consequences (border hopping) of their own failed policy of age discrimination.
Q14) How could the TSAP alcohol policy possibly solve our teen drinking problem?
A14) First of all, there is no "teen drinking problem." What we have is an American drinking problem that affects all ages. Of all the children under 16 killed by drunk drivers, 90% of them were killed by a driver over 21. The 21-24 year old age group is the most likely to drive drunk as well as to drink heavily. Alcohol abuse is quite high among middle-aged folks as well, with 40 year olds being worse overall than 17 year olds. Yes, some (but not all) teenagers do drink irresponsibly as well. But there has never been a society in which adults drink but teenagers do not, nor has there been one in which teenagers drink but adults do not. The pink elephant in the room is the abusive drinking of the adults around them, which is the strongest influence of all. Are we really so fixated on age that we fail to see the forest for the trees?
The TSAP alcohol policy is an inversion of America's current one in some respects. Instead of targeting all drinking by people under 21, we target irresponsible drinking by people of all ages, and hold individuals accountable for bad behavior. History has shown that is the only way, and America's unique obsession with age is counterproductive. Cigarette use declined dramatically since its peak in 1976, with the only significant public policy measures being education, taxation, and advertising restrictions. America did not raise the smoking age to 21 (in fact, the current age limit of 18 in 46 states is poorly enforced). Yet that was a real success story. With something similar to that for alcohol, as well as getting tougher on drunk driving and drunk violence, and increasing treatment for alcoholism, we will likely see the American drinking problem decline in the long run.
Q15) As far as taxes are concerned, why are you picking on beer?
A15) Because the liquor taxes are already much higher, and cheap beer is disproportionately found in drunk driving fatalities and other alcohol-related deaths and injuries. Beer is the drink of choice for drunk drivers and underage drinkers, partly because it is so cheap (when bought off-premises at least). Currently, the cheapest brands cost less than a dollar per standard drink (especially when bought in bulk, such as for keg parties) in most states, meaning the average adult could get very drunk for $3.00-$5.00. That's why this amount is the typical "all you can drink" admission fee at your typical kegger, while when it comes to serving liquor the hosts are much more stingy. Also, most of the studies of the effects of alcohol taxes focused on beer, and it is likely that they do reduce fatalities, especially when the drinking age is low.
Just so you know, microbreweries (at least at the federal level) currently pay a lower beer tax rate than large breweries, and that rate should remain unchanged. Their high-quality beers are already significantly more expensive than the cheap, mass-produced brands that are favored by those who are most likely to abuse them. And the relatively high prices are already somewhat proportional to alcohol content.
Alcopops (flavored malt beverages) should be taxed as liquor (or higher) rather than beer, since they are made with liquor and are designed for and marketed toward underage drinkers.
It may also be a good idea to raise the liquor and wine taxes as well, since all alcohol taxes have lagged behind inflation, but beer is the most important one to raise as it has lagged the most since 1951. Liquor is much more elastic than beer and only a small increase will be needed to pack the same punch as the beer tax hike. It would also be good to make beer taxes proportional to alcohol content as well, like it currently is with liquor. Equalizing the tax per alcohol content for all beverages (beer, wine, liquor) would make sense as well since alcohol is alcohol. And we should index all excise taxes to inflation from now on as well, so they won't lag behind again.
Q16) You say you want to lower the blood alcohol limit to 0.05? But most alcohol related fatalities occur at 0.15 or higher. How dare you punish responsible adult social drinkers!
A16) You mean like responsible social drinking 18-20 year old adults are currently punished for drinking period, even if they never set foot behind the wheel? With fines, license suspension, and even jail in some states? Absolutely not. That is a straw man often used by alcohol industry groups who are afraid that demand for their product will wane if stricter BAC limits are used. Science shows that driving impairment begins well below the current limit of 0.08 (about three drinks for the average adult). A limit of 0.05 will still allow for one or two drinks before getting behind the wheel, and remember even that can produce some impairment. 0.05 is the standard used by Australia, and several other countries, and it seems to work pretty well. Remember, a truly responsible person will not drive with any alcohol in his or her system, let alone several drinks in a row.
It is true that most fatalities occur at BAC 0.15 or higher. That's why the TSAP supports a graduated penalty scheme, not unlike what is done with speeding. There's a huge difference between two drinks and ten. Here's how it would most likely go if the TSAP was in power:

0.05-0.08 $500 fine, license suspended for 90 days. No jail. (Administrative only)

0.08-0.10 $1000 fine, license revoked at least 1 year, up to 6 months jail. Misdemeanor.
0.10-0.15 $5000 fine, license revoked at least 5 years, mandatory 6 months jail (maximum 1 years). Misdemeanor.
0.15+ $10,000 fine, license revoked at least 10 years, mandatory 1+ year jail (maximum 5 years). Felony.

0.05-0.08 repeat offenders lose their licenses for a year. 0.08+ repeat offenders will lose their licenses forever, $5000+ fine, forfeit their vehicles, and get mandatory 1 year or more in jail (felony). 0.10+ repeat offenders will get mandatory 5 years in prison as well.

Forced treatment, if necessary, will be in addition to the penalties. For first-time offenders, jail sentence may be reduced below the mandatory minimum or replaced entirely with electronic monitoring if treatment is completed successfully. But you won't get your license back any sooner.
Fines listed are minimum amounts on a sliding scale based on income. That is what college students would pay. Wealthy drunk drivers, such as Congressmen, would pay even more!
Kill or maim an innocent person in a drunken accident and get mandatory minimum 10 years in prison if it is determined to be your fault. If you're an alcoholic, you get to dry out in prison.
Additionally, we support keeping a Zero Tolerance law for drivers under 21. For 0.02-0.05, $250 fine, license will be suspended 6 months, violation. For 0.05-0.08, suspension will be no less than 6 months, up to a year. Or better yet, apply Zero Tolerance to all drivers with less than 5 years of licensed driving at any age, and again for those whose licenses have been revoked. That would be stricter, but much less ageist. The TSAP favors a ZT limit of 0.02 over 0.00 to avoid false positives (the body naturally produces alcohol).
Of course, we must avoid the pitfall of targeting the plentiful low BAC drivers more than higher ones, and should prioritize enforcement toward the highest BAC drivers. And besides, it would be much more lucrative to target the latter when you consider the schedule of fines above! Setting the BAC limit low will scare the crap out of most people even with minimal enforcement, but not so for the hardcore drunk drivers. Clearly, enforcement must be stepped up in order to get the latter. Roving patrols will work better than checkpoints at getting the worst ones off the road first.
Q17) What about people under 18? Should it be legal for them to drink too?
A17) The TSAP does not take a position on whether the alcohol purchase age should eventually be lowered any further after reducing it to 18. However, we do not think that simple possession or consumption of alcoholic beverages per se should be a crime at any age, especially in a private residence. Alcohol should ideally be treated like most states treat cigarettes, in other words. If the powers that be decide that it must remain illegal for youth under 18 to simply possess or consume alcohol, it should be treated like a minor traffic violation, punished with no more than a small fine (less than $200) and perhaps an alcohol education class. It should never result in jail time, arrest, or even a criminal record. The act of drinking a beer is no more "criminal" than smoking a cigarette is, and the law should reflect that. We do not support "internal possession" or "walking while intoxicated" laws in which failing a breathalyzer when not driving is punishable. Warrantless searches and forced chemical testing may not be used to enforce the drinking age, regardless of what it is.
Whatever age limit is ultimately chosen, supply-side enforcement of the new drinking age should be stepped up. IDs should be updated to be more forgery-resistant and scannable if they are not already, scanners should be used in ideally all outlets, and compliance checks should be increased. Enforcement on off-sales is probably more important than bars and restaurants, but both should be stepped up. Ditto for cigarettes as well.
The TSAP does believe in any case that parents should be allowed to give their kids under 18 alcohol at home at any age (supervised and within reason of course), as most states already allow, and any laws that prohibit it should be repealed. Drinking with parents is a proven way to reduce the chance of later alcohol abuse. We do not take a position on whether parents should be allowed to give their underage kids alcohol in bars and restaurants like Wisconsin currently does, as there are very good arguments both for and against.
Q18) But education doesn't work. What makes you think it will under your policy?
A18) This is a classic meme among both the pro-21 crowd and the neo-drys, a meme that has to die now or else young people will continue to die from truly dangerous drinking, regardless of the drinking age. That specious argument ignores several important facts:

• Most alcohol education programs that were studied were abstinence-only and consisted of mainly half-truths and scare tactics, and/or a fixation on age.
• Some programs are little more than temperance lectures. There is a huge difference between "alcohol education" and "anti-alcohol education" that the pundits often (deliberately?) fail to see.
• Sex education programs that are abstinence-only have been a failure, while most comprehensive programs have been shown to work. There is no good reason to believe this would not be true for alcohol.
• Not all education is equal. Numerous types exist.
• Studies often only look at the short-term effects and not the long-term effects of alcohol education.
• Following the logic of the pro-21 crowd, then driver's ed should be abolished. What sane person would advocate that?
• Education of any kind, alcohol or otherwise has to begin early (well before 18) and be repeated in order to achieve the maximum benefits.

In fact, there exists an online alcohol education program called AlcoholEdu that has been shown to work in terms of reducing dangerous drinking. Randomized controlled trials have proven its effectiveness, both in changing attitudes and behavior. It is currently used by some colleges and even high schools, but clearly not enough of them. It seems that online, interactive, and honest education works the best, even if it is only a few hours. And it is very cost-effective as well.
The TSAP believes that, coupled with an increased beer tax and a more realistic drinking age, education that is properly designed and implemented would work wonders in reducing America's drinking problem, especially (but not only) in the long run. Those who say "education doesn't work" clearly have their heads in an anatomically impossible position.
Q19) What is your position on alcohol advertising?
A19) The TSAP believes that alcohol advertising/marketing should be allowed no more leeway than tobacco advertising currently has. That means no TV, no radio, and no billboards. Also, no alcohol ads in magazines with more than 20% of the readers under 18. Exterior advertising at retail locations should be limited as well, and interior advertising discreet.
Q20) What is your position on dram shop and social host liability laws?
A20) The TSAP supports neither as they lead to lawsuit abuse that enriches trial lawyers while they are of questionable effectiveness in reducing alcohol-related fatalities and injuries. These laws conflict with our values of liberty and personal responsibility, as well as our position on tort reform. Throw the book at the drunk drivers instead! And if you get so drunk you pass out on the train tracks and your arm gets severed by a train, that's your own fault, not the bar who served you, idiot.
The term "social host law" can also refer to laws in some jurisdictions that punish adults (or even teens) criminally for merely allowing underage alcohol consumption on their property, regardless of who brought or provided it. Depending on the jurisdiction, penalties range from a small fine to multiple years in prison. Such laws have never been shown to save lives, and it is highly unlikely that they do. As a result, only the bold and reckless throw underage drinking parties, as opposed to parents who take everyone's keys (to prevent drunk driving) and monitor the situation. It merely forces drinking even further underground (woods, cornfields, graveyards, cars) and makes it all the more hazardous. We do not support such laws either as they are very difficult to enforce without violating the Constitution, the punishment often does not fit the "crime," and they are likely counterproductive as well.
Q21) Is the TSAP affiliated with the alcohol industry? How much did they pay you?
A21) No. And we don't get a dime from them either, nor would we accept anything from them. When was the last time the industry, or any of its front groups, came out in favor of increased alcohol taxes, let alone even modest advertising restrictions? Your question doesn't even pass the straight face test.
(Originally, this list was supposed to be 21 questions, in keeping with the theme, but there are further questions to be answered as well)
Q22) What would you do about highway funding?
A22) This is the question that often leaves the anti-21 side stumped. But we do not get stumped so easily. For those who don't know, the federal government in 1984 coerced states that had a drinking age below 21 to raise it and keep it 21 or else lose 10% of highway funding for every year the age is below 21. It has no sunset clause, unfortunately. So there are three possible things to do about it:
Option A: Reform the Federal Law
This is the ideal solution. Unfortunately, it is not as easy as it sounds. Obama said he was against it while running for President in 2008, as did Biden. But maybe Obama was just saying that, who knows. Any politician who says otherwise is taking a huge risk since the polls say over 70% of adults (even higher among those who are older, female, and parents) want the age to stay 21 as opposed to lowering it. Convincing Congress to change the law in spite of this is a Herculean task indeed. But that law is up for reauthorization this year. So one can only hope that it will be de-authorized one of these days. Until then, we must do our best to swing the popular support to our cause. Remember, it was not until 70% of the adult population was against Prohibition that it was successfully repealed at the federal level in 1933. And women were the most crucial demographic driving the movement towards repeal.
So we clearly have our work cut out for us. Women need to know that the 21 drinking age does not make them any safer--it only diverts police resources away from protecting them, and forces young female drinkers underground into potentially dangerous situations. Much like Prohibition did in the 1920s. Parents need to be informed that their kids will most likely drink before the age of 21 (they have a 90% chance of doing so) and that a lower drinking age will reduce harm by allowing drinking to take place in above-ground, less risky settings. If that fails, let them know that before the age of 16, their kids are more likely to be killed by a drunk driver over 21 than by any other alcohol-related cause, and it is foolish to keep diverting resources away from this problem to bust 18-20 year olds simply for drinking period. And most importantly, older folks need to know that the youth of America are a force to be reckoned with. After all, that was what caused 30 states to lower the drinking age (along with the voting age and age of majority) for the Baby Boomers in 1970-1976.
Option B: Defy the Feds
Another option is for states to take matters into their own hands. If enough states do it in spite of the cost, and by "enough" we mean the majority, the feds will eventually back down. But in the meantime, such states will lose 10% of their designated highway funds, and the dollar amount varies widely from state to state. However, Puerto Rico did exactly that, keeping the age at 18 despite the penalty, and simply put up toll booths to make up the difference. The amount they get now is only 90% of what they are entitled to, but that became the new normal. States could easily make up the funds by raising alcohol taxes (which should be done anyway, especially for beer), raising the gas tax and possibly giving a "prebate" to drivers over 21, implementing congestion pricing, and increasing the fines for drunk driving. All of these things would have positive externalities as well: fewer crashes, fewer alcohol deaths, less fuel consumption, and less pollution.
Option C: Make an End-Run Around the Feds (the Louisiana Loophole)
A less obvious solution also exists. The feds made an end-run around the Constitution by coercing states to raise their drinking ages, so we should be able to make an end-run around the misleadingly-named National Minimum Drinking Age Act (if you forgive the sports metaphor). In fact, Louisiana did just that from 1987-1995, and lost no highway funding in the process. It's really quite simple. There is a huge loophole in the law in that only "purchase" and "public possession" (as defined by the feds, with exceptions) must be prohibited by a state to recieve federal highway funding. Ancillary laws are not affected or even mentioned. Even sale to a person under 21 need not be prohibited, only purchase by such person. Furthermore, no penalties or even enforcement are required, just that the law be on the books.
To lower the drinking age to 18 de facto without jeopardizing highway funding, simply take the following five steps:

1. Make a law that explicitly prohibits purchase and public possession, and only those two acts, for those under 21, with the definitions for those terms the same as the feds' definitions, verbatim.
2. Have no penalty (or a trivial penalty like a $5 fine ticket) for those two specific acts when committed by a person 18-20 years old.
3. Repeal any laws prohibiting (or even mentioning specifically) the sale of alcohol to 18-20 year olds, and only explicitly prohibit (and penalize) sale to those under 18. This loophole will render the purchase law unenforceable, but still valid in the eyes of the feds, thus no loss of highway funding. Also, make 18 the minimum age to enter bars if not already the case.
4. For ancillary laws like private possession/consumption, furnishing to minors, dram shop, social host, etc., change "21" to "18" wherever it occurs, and/or abolish those laws altogether.
5. Maintain the Zero Tolerance law (for drinking and driving) at 21, with BAC limit 0.02. Although ancillary, a separate federal law further takes away highway funding for not complying with this one. (Note that this is also true for open container in vehicle laws, the 0.08 or lower BAC limit for DUI, and seat belt laws).

Louisiana did something very similar until 1995, when that state closed the sale loophole (point three above) on their own. Until then, it was 21 only on paper, and they lost no funding even though the de facto age was 18. In 1996, the 21 drinking age was taken to court and overturned in full, making the age 18 de jure for three months. That, however, aroused the anger of the feds and Clinton, who threatened to take away the highway funding, causing a huge uproar. The Louisiana Supreme Court reversed their own decision three months later, and it remains 21 to this day. But some exceptions still exist, such as drinking in a private residence, and enforcement remains rather spotty in many parts of the state. So we have a precedent already, and are not venturing into uncharted waters.
Another thing that can be done, of course, is to challenge the constitutionality of having a drinking age higher than the age of majority on 14th Amendment (equal protection) grounds. That has yet to be tested in the U.S. Supreme Court. If victorious, then nearly all states would have lower the age to 18, and the federal law would be left completely toothless. That, of course, would be ideal.
Q23) Would you lower the drinking age suddenly or gradually?
A23) The TSAP believes that, to minimize any possible short-term adverse effects, it would be best to lower the age (relatively) gradually. It would also be more subtle and less scary for the masses, which would enhance popular support for the change. But lowering it too slowly can lead to backpedaling, and frankly we should not continue the injustice of Legal Age 21 any longer as a matter of principle. This can be done in many ways, but one in particular stands out as the best. Here are the steps on how we propose to phase in the lower drinking age:

1. Allow up to one month of lead time before lowering the drinking age, during which high schools and colleges can implement a "crash course" on alcohol if they so choose to. The beer tax hike should be fully phased in and drunk driving law changes should be passed by the end of this period as there is always a delayed effect with these things. Make underage possession (without incident) by 18-20 year olds the lowest law enforcement priority during this period.
2. After the lead-in period, begin dropping the drinking age by a month each day until it becomes 18 (21 years, 20 years and 11 months, 20 years and 10 months.....18 years). That will take 36 days to complete. Alternatively, the age could be dropped by a month each week, such as every Friday, which would take about 8 1/2 months. Either way, give modified "born on" calendars to alcohol sellers that reflect this change.
3. Keep the purchase age for kegs, multiple cases, and possibly other bulk alcohol purchases at 21 for at least the first few years. Also, anything larger than an 18 pack should be sold only at a beer distributor, regardless of age. That should alleviate any fears of increased high school keggers.
4. "Wolf-pack" the highways with police patrols like never before, to crack down on drunk driving. Set up sobriety checkpoints in strategic locations as well. Flood the airwaves with publicity about the increased DUI enforcement.
5. Keep the Zero Tolerance (drinking and driving) age at 21, with BAC of 0.02.

This should work very well if all five steps are followed. We doubt that it would even be all that bad if the age was lowered in a single step, but the above method appears to be the safest and most practical, while at the same time ending the injustice relatively quickly. If Option C (see Question 22) is followed to create a de facto drinking age instead, then everything would be implemented immediately but the sale age, which would be lowered the same as above, only through a non-enforcement protocol for the specific ages during the phase in.
The keg/case exception may anger the purists in the movement to lower the drinking age, but that will increase the chance of getting it passed. Many would feel that is the most prudent thing that can be done with respect to bulk purchases. And remember, such massive amounts of alcohol are seldom for personal use. If you are concerned that kegs are the "greener" alternative to cans, the term "keg" could be legally defined as "x number of gallons or more," so mini-kegs (1.5 gallons) would be treated like non-bulk alcohol for the purposes of the purchase age. And then there's draft beer at the bar, which is obviously non-bulk.
Q24) It may work fine in other countries, but America is too undisciplined/irresponsible/spoiled/diverse/multicultural/(insert favorite adjective here) to allow 18-20 year olds to drink. And our society is far too fractured as well.
A24) By that pseudo-logic, NO ONE in America of ANY age should be allowed to drink, period! And if Americans can't be trusted with alcohol, can they really be trusted with anything? In any case, in the interest of justice, we ought to allow 18-20 year olds, who are legal adults in essentially all other aspects, to have at least the same rights that those over 21 currently enjoy.
Diversity is a red-herring to this issue. If anything, a higher concentration of non-whites likely reduces overall alcohol abuse, even among whites. One can also observe that a high concentration of Anglo-Celtics in a country tends to increase alcohol abuse. Diversity is irrelevant to the drinking age.
As for ours being a fractured society, we certainly are, and more so than most developed countries. But arbitrarily dividing the adult population with an unrealistically high drinking age, and denying young people their rights, only exacerbates any such fracturedness.
Q25) You're just punting on the issue, leaving the under-resourced high-school principals and parents to deal with it. How dare you!
A25) No, the principals and parents who stick their heads in the sand and leaving college presidents and staff to deal with it are the ones who are really punting. And right now numerous high school kids still drink despite a drinking age of 21. Open your eyes. Right now, it is easier for 8th-10th graders to get alcohol than it is to get cigarettes, a product whose purchase age is 18 (and often poorly enforced) in nearly all states.
Yes, high school drinking has sharply declined since 1979 according to the Monitoring the Future survey, but that trend began many years before a significant number of states raised the drinking age to 21, and also occurred in states that were 21 throughout with no age change. Canada saw a decrease as well, and they did not raise the drinking age to 21. For cigarettes, smoking rates among American high schoolers declined even faster than drinking rates. (It is worth noting, however, that there is no data in the MTF surveys for grades other than 12th grade for years earlier than 1991).
For kids under 18, it SHOULD be the parents who deal with it, regardless of whether the drinking age is 18 or 21.
As for high schoolers having "liquid lunches" during school hours, it's not the 1970s anymore. Schools are often run like prisons, and students are much more defanged and declawed than their parents were when they were in high school. Such behavior is now considered a red flag for a student having a serious drinking problem. Thus any such fears are largely anachronistic.
Q26) What benefits are there to raising the beer tax?
A26) Plenty. Aside from merely raising revenue, numerous studies have shown that they likely reduce traffic fatalities significantly. While Dee (1999) found no significant effect (and the wrong sign) after adjusting for state and year fixed effects as well as state-specific trends, he did not include Alaska and Hawaii, which are the highest and fourth-highest beer tax states, respectively (#2 is Alabama and #3 is Georgia, if local tax is included). Most of the others states' taxes are an order of magnitude lower, which is too small to significantly affect the price. So there was too much noise in the data to be accurate, and that was the biggest flaw. Fixed-effects and state trends may have absorbed what little useful variation in taxes there was. But Miron and Tetelbaum (2007) replicated Dee's best 1999 model and then added AK, HI, and DC to the data, changing nothing else. They inadvertently discovered that the sign changed to the expected one, and it became significant at the 10% level (The TSAP speculates that if it weren't for the statistical noise from all the very low-tax states, the significance level would be much stronger). In fact, the estimated effect size of doubling the beer tax was about twice that of raising the drinking age from 18 to 21, and that was before Miron changed the model in ways to which the drinking age effect was no longer robust.
Other studies have found additional benefits, which include:

• Reduced "binge" drinking (Powell et al., 2002) (Kuo et al., 2003*)
• Reduced underage drinking (Chaloupka et al., 2002)
• Reduced BAC levels among college bar patrons (O'Mara et al., 2009*)
• Reduced cirrhosis deaths (Cook, 1981**; Wagenaar et al., 2008)
• Reduced total alcohol-related deaths (Hollingworth et al., 2006; Wagenaar et al., 2008)
• Reduced syphilis and gonorrhea rates (Chesson et al., 2000)
• Reduced crime, especially rape and other violent crimes (Grossman and Markowitz, 2000; Cook and Moore, 1993)
• Reduced child abuse and domestic violence (Markowitz and Grossman, 1998)
• Possible reduction in alcohol dependence (Farrell et al. 2003)*
• Possible reduction in youth suicides (Markowitz et al. 2003)
• Possible reduction in teen pregnancy and abortion rates (Sen, 2003)
• Possible improvement in infant health outcomes
• Possible reduction in other drug use (Pacula, 1998)
• Possible increase in college attendance and graduation rates (Cook and Moore, 1993)
• More money for healthcare, education, alcohol treatment, and DUI enforcement

*Indicates alcohol prices were studied rather than taxes, but the implication is the same.
**Indicates that liquor taxes were studied instead of beer taxes.

The TSAP also believes that liquor tax and alcopop tax hikes in addition to the beer tax may be beneficial as well. Some studies have found that beer taxes affect men more than women (or vice-versa), so raising the tax on other beverages would likely correct for this disparity.
Some studies (Ponicki et al., 2008) find that people immediately below the current drinking age of 21 are less sensitive to the beer tax than those immediately above it, and that there may be a negative interaction between the beer tax and the drinking age. This suggests that a high drinking age attenuates the true effects of the beer tax (possibly due to artificial scarcity of alcohol and/or the ubiquitous "all you can drink" keggers with a flat rate). With a lower drinking age, 18-20 year olds will be more likely to buy their own alcohol (and pay full price) than before.

In addition, job losses would be unlikely given the fact that the last time the feds raised the beer tax in 1990-1991, there was an increase in many types of beer industry jobs. The ones that were lost were obsolete ones that had been declining long before 1990 due to automation. And that was during a recession. Canada, which has significantly higher alcohol (and other) taxes than we do, still has a thriving brewing industry.

Q27) What are the current alcohol taxes, and what would they be if they had been adjusted for inflation?
A27) Quite a bit higher, in fact. The following is what the federal taxes (state and local not included) currently are according to the Tax and Trade Bureau and what they would be in 2008 dollars had they been adjusted for inflation since 1951, the year they were first instituted:

Current Rates:

• Beer: $0.58/gallon or $0.33/six-pack
• Wine: $1.07/gallon* or $0.21/fifth
• Spirits: $13.50/proof-gallon* or $2.14/fifth of 80 proof

Inflation-Adjusted Values (2008 dollars):

• Beer (1951): $2.38/gallon or $1.34/six-pack
• Wine (1951): $1.39/gallon* or $0.27/fifth
• Wine (1991): $1.67/gallon* or $0.33/fifth
• Spirits (1951): $86.31/proof-gallon* or $13.68/fifth of 80 proof
• Spirits (1991): $21.08/proof-gallon* or $3.34/fifth of 80 proof

If all beverages were set equal to spirits per proof gallon in 1991, and adjusted for inflation since then in 2008 they would be:

• Beer (5% ABV): $2.11/gallon or $1.19/six-pack
• Wine (10% ABV): $4.22/gallon or $0.84/fifth
• Spirits (40% ABV): $3.34/fifth

and thus a typical six-pack of beer, a fifth of wine, and a fifth of liquor would all cost about a dollar more than they are currently.

*Proportional to alcohol content, average table wine value shown. One proof-gallon is one gallon at 100 proof (50% alcohol by volume). Note that the beer tax is currently not proportional to alcohol content for some odd reason, despite the fact that wine and liquor taxes are.

The federal beer tax also has a reduced rate of $0.23/gallon ($7.00/barrel) on each of the first 60,000 barrels for microbrewers (those who produce 2 million barrels or less).

Notice that wine was the only one that approximately kept up with inflation, mainly because the wine tax was raised nearly tenfold in 1991. The distilled spirits tax lagged the most at the federal level despite being raised twice (in 1985 and 1991), but that is tempered by the relatively high state taxes on such beverages. The beer tax has clearly lagged as well, and was only raised once since 1951, and that was in 1991.
The state taxes on beer have also lagged inflation in most states and few have raised them significantly in the past few decades (a notable exception being Alaska). State tax data for 2009 can be found here. Beer taxes range from $0.02/gallon in Wyoming to $1.07/gallon in Alaska, while liquor taxes range from $1.50/gallon in DC to $20.76/gallon in Oregon. Most states' beer taxes lie toward the lower end of the range, about an order of magnitude less than the top five states (AK, AL, GA, HI, and SC). The average beer tax rate is $0.26/gallon ($0.15/six-pack), and the combined federal/state rate on average is $0.84/gallon ($0.48/six-pack).
It is also worth noting that alcopops are taxed the same as beer at the federal level and in the majority of states, despite the fact that they are made with distilled spirits.
By comparison, as of 2003, Canada's federal beer tax was $1.06/gallon, wine tax was $1.95/gallon, and the liquor tax was $20.39/proof-gallon. (Metric conversion calculations ours, using rates for "normal strength" beer and wine, given in nominal Canadian dollars.) These figures do not include 5% GST (a federal value-added tax on most goods and services), bottle deposits, provincial alcohol taxes, provincial alcohol markups, or provincial sales taxes. Many of which are higher than in the USA. When all is said and done, the final retail price on a typical case of beer in Ontario is about double what it is in most of the USA, even when the Canadian prices are converted to American dollars. But there is variation between provinces, with Quebec's prices being only about 1.5 times what it is in America, a 25% difference from Ontario. Many provinces also have price floors: no one in Ontario may legally sell beer for less than $24/case, or $1 per can.

Q28)  How dare you even suggest lowering the drinking age!  I don't want some 18 year old guy buying booze for my 15 year old daughter!
A28)  So you would rather a 21 year old buy her booze instead?  That's gotta be creepier, don't you think?

Q29)  The only thing wrong with the 21 drinking age is that it's not being enforced enough, as well as the presence of loopholes.  We just need to strengthen and enforce it better.  The benefits have been demonstrated with only minimal enforcement, but studies show tougher enforcement works even better.
A29)  False.  This notion is grossly outdated, and based on a few studies using data from the early 1990s, a time when enforcement was fairly lax.  First of all, it is now enforced more than ever in American history, and more than other countries enforce their own drinking ages.  Most "loopholes", if you want to call them that, have effectively been closed in most states by numerous ancillary laws to prop up the 21 drinking age, such as dram shop, social host, zero tolerance, internal possession, use and lose, and many others.  Secondly, the fact that the alleged benefits occurred during a time of weak enforcement and many loopholes suggests that the such benefits were likely due to other factors than raising the drinking age.

As for the studies that show that tougher enforcement increases the supposed benefits of the drinking age, i.e. those by Wagenaar et al., they do not seem to stand up to close scrutiny.  In 1993-1995, several Upper Midwestern communities were randomly assigned (or not assigned) to a community-level intervention whose purpose was to increase enforcement of the drinking age, particularly on the supply side.  This program was known as Communities Mobilizing for Change on Alcohol (CMCA), and the effects of which were studied as a randomized trial.  Though hailed as a success by the authors and others, there were serious issues that were glossed over.  For example, while the propensity of alcohol outlets to sell booze to those under 21 appeared to drop, and telephone surveys indicated a modest net reduction in self-reported drinking by 18-20 year olds (the most targeted age group), self-reported "binge" drinking (5+ drinks in a row) appeared to show a small net increase among that age group.  For high school seniors, the net effect on all measures was either virtually nil or had the "wrong" sign, implying that targeting 18-20 year olds does essentially nothing to protect high schoolers.  A second study by Wagenaar compared outcomes of the intervention on DUI arrests, disorderly conduct arrests, and traffic crashes (both single-vehicle nighttime and those reported alcohol-related).  Results:  a modest net reduction in DUI arrests for 18-20 year olds, but no significant change in any other measures, including crashes of either kind for 18-20 year olds or 15-17 year olds.  Thus it probably did not save any lives, and the overall results were really quite anemic (to say the least) given all that was invested in the program.

Contrast this to the effects of tobacco enforcement of the purchase age of 18.  Though only a handful of studies have been done on the matter, nearly all of them suggest quite strongly that not only does tougher enforcement (specifically targeting vendors) succeed in reducing sales to minors, but also reduces smoking in those under 18.  Not only is the age limit lower for cigarettes than for alcohol, but most of the country still enforces the age limit for tobacco less vigorously than for alcohol as well.  However, since the 1970s, both teen and adult smoking have plummeted by half, declining more so than drinking has, even though no state has raised the smoking age to 21.  In fact, unlike booze, most states do not even prohibit possession or use of tobacco by minors, only purchase and sale.   The success story was primarily due to education, taxation, and advertising restrictions.