Steve Koenemann

The Great Drinking Age Debate

I guess that I was not surprised to read this week that the Vermont Legislature had, again, taken up the volatile question of whether the legal drinking age should be changed from the current 21 years back to 18. The reason that I was not that surprised was that this highly polarizing issue has simmered (raged?) in the background of society, occasionally flaring up into the spotlight of the media, for many years. I must admit that my own convictions concerning this issue are a bit fuzzy. Unfortunately, like many “tastes great, less filling” issues, both sides spout studies, statistics and “facts” that significantly contradict each other; making them all but useless to people like me trying to decide where I stand on this issue. Follow along as I “think out loud” about this debate…

The consumption of alcohol in this country has been a significantly debatable issue since the mid-1800s when the temperance movement began to gather both supporters and momentum. Their efforts, of course, eventually resulted in the 1920 18^th Amendment banning the production, sale and transportation of alcohol for consumption; the Prohibition era began. While certainly making it illegal, the new law did little to reduce alcohol consumption in the US… the rise of the “speakeasy”, the “bootlegger” and the efforts of organized crime saw to that. Prohibition became increasingly unpopular, particularly during the early part of the Great Depression, and in 1933, with the ratification of the 21^st Amendment, Prohibition was ended. Unfortunately that did almost nothing to clarify the sale and consumption of alcohol in this country; if anything, it made it worse. Both state and local governments, who, prior to Prohibition, had already been active in passing their own regulations concerning the sale and distribution of alcohol, seemed to go into “overdrive”; passing every conceivable variation of regulatory restriction you could imagine. That phenomenon continues to this day with new laws both restricting and relaxing the sale of alcohol going on the books every year. There are whole Web sites dedicated to the documentation, ridicule and humor of some of these laws, so I will not take the time to go into any of that here; although it might be fun and interesting to do so in a future article.

The federal government again waded into this debate in 1984 by passing the National Minimum Drinking Age Act which required all states to raise their minimum purchase and public possession of alcohol age to 21. States that did not comply faced a reduction in highway funds under the Federal Highway Aid Act. All states are currently complying with this law; although as evidenced by the debate currently underway here in Vermont, not everyone is happy with that.

I am not one to do something simply because everyone else is doing it (well… perhaps when I was younger, maybe), but in comparison to much of the rest of the world, the US seems significantly out of step when it comes to its drinking age and its drinking laws. Very few countries (I found less than 10) match the US at 21 years for alcohol purchase and consumption and only in certain parts of India was it higher (25). There are, of course, countries of the world where the sale and consumption of alcohol is not legal, but these are few. A fair number of countries make an age distinction between drinking and purchasing. Many countries make a distinction between the age that alcohol can be consumed in public versus privately. Some countries even define specific circumstances where it is legal to allow children as young as five to consume alcohol. However, for the vast majority of the world’s countries, the age of 18 is considered the legal public drinking age. Does the 21 year drinking barrier produce the desired effect? According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), the number of surveyed youths under age 18 reported having a drink within the last month dropped from 59% in 1985 (right after the minimum drinking law was passed) to 40% in 1991. However, by 1999 this percentage had crept back up to 47%. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 75 percent of 12th graders, two thirds of 10th graders, and two fifths of eighth graders have consumed alcohol. It looks like the the old adage that “where there is a will, there is a way” may be true in this case. A pattern not unlike what the Prohibition laws produced, from my perspective.

One of the common arguments that you hear for maintaining the current drinking age of 21 is the reduction of alcohol-related automobile accidents and deaths among younger drivers. As I discovered, there is an important distinction made by many between automobile accidents/fatalities which are “alcohol-related” and those that are “caused by alcohol”. An accident is considered alcohol-related even if it is a non-occupant (pedestrian, cyclist, etc.) that has the legally measurable blood alcohol content. For our purposes and to try to eliminate any confusion, I will use statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which tracks some thing it calls “alcohol-impaired-driving” deaths; the driver was legally alcohol-impaired in these accidents, therefore a “drunk driving” death. The latest NHTSA figures that I could find (2008) indicate that about 32% (11,773) of the 37,261 traffic fatalities were caused by “alcohol-impaired-driving”. Teens (16-20) accounted for 17% of all drivers who were involved in drunk driving crashes. By contrast, the 21-24 age group accounted for 34%, the 25-34 group accounted for 31%, while those from 35-44 years of age accounted for 25%. If you look back at the NHTSA statistics for 2005, 16% of “alcohol-impaired-driving” crashes involved the 16-20 “teen” group. While I am not (far from) a statistician, the fact that the percentage involving teen drivers does not change much gives one the sense that the 21 year barrier does not appear to provide the desired effect.

I don’t think that there is an easy answer to this issue. There is no question that the barrier of 21 limits some access to alcohol by teens, but as evidenced above, it clearly does not prevent it and probably never will. The teen years by definition are “formative”; when these young people will begin to lock in patterns and habits that may continue the rest of their adult lives. While it is certainly true that a pattern of alcohol abuse could be one of those developed during this period, I contrast that line of thinking against the potential benefits of removing the “mystique” of alcohol from these questioning minds. If these young people are going to continue to seek out and drink alcohol, as the statistics above show (even if you don’t agree with my proposed conclusion) would we be better off opening that exploration to the rest of us, rather than driving it “underground”? Restrictive barriers of this type (Prohibition or drinking age limit or teen abstinence or whatever) rarely seem to produce the desired results. As a former classroom teacher of the teen age group and a father of two grown children, my experience has been that non-confrontational open discussions and factual education, rather than restrictive rules, produce better results. Something to consider perhaps?

Leave a Reply

Click here to cancel reply.

Username (required) :
Email (required) :
Web Site :
Comment :

CAPTCHA Code *