The drinking age deprives millions of people of their freedom and leads to hundreds of thousands of arrests each year. On top of this, the drinking age promotes unsafe drinking habits and fails to teach moderate use. It’s time to look honestly at the ineffectiveness, the injustice, and the harm that this law causes to our society.
1. The punishments for underage drinking cause widespread harm.
For every life the drinking age is supposed to save, it disrupts or ruins a hundred others. Here are just a few of the different groups of people who face harmful penalties from laws related to underage drinking:
- Underage drinkers Using a report by the FBI,sociologist Mike A. Males estimates that in 2015 police arrested 163,000 people under age 21 for liquor law violations. Underage drinkers face a wide variety of legal consequences, including fines, driver’s license revocation, community service, and even jail time.
- College students can face additional penalties from their schools.These include probation, loss of financial aid, and suspension or expulsion.
- Bar and restaurant workers can face a wide variety of consequences if underage drinking happens on their watch. In addition to thousands of dollars in fines and jail time, their liquor licenses may be suspended, losing them thousands more in profits. Employees who serve minors—even by accident—can be fired.
- Parents can face criminal repercussions if their children drink.
- Underage non-drinkers You don’t actually have to drink or possess alcohol in order to get punished for it. In many jurisdictions, police can charge minors in attendance at parties where underage drinking happens, even if they weren’t drinking.
2. Raising the drinking age has not saved lives.
The most popular argument used to defend the drinking age is that it saves lives. However, this claim is highly questionable. Here’s what actually happened when the drinking age was raised to 21:
- It did not cause a significant decrease in drunk driving deaths. Although drunk driving deaths fell during the 1980s, this decrease was already underway when the drinking age was raised in 1986. There were a lot of other factors that contributed to the decrease, such as increased seat belt use, lower BAC limits, and more negative social attitudes towards drunk driving.
- It moved drunk driving deaths from one age bracket to another. In an unrefuted study, Peter Asch and David Levy showed that raising the drinking age merely transferred drunk driving deaths from the 18-20 age group to the 21-24 age group. Their research confirmed their hypothesis that the real risk factor for drinking and driving is being an inexperienced drinker, not being under 21.
- It had no effect on long-term alcohol deaths. The long-term rate of alcohol deaths among a group of people has less to do with whether drinking is legal for them, and more to do with other societal factors.
3. The current drinking age causes bad drinking habits.
The drinking age ensures that most of us start drinking in secret. Secrets of any kind are psychologically unhealthy, causing anxiety, negative thought patterns, and depression. Combined with an emotion-amplifying drug like alcohol, it’s no wonder the psychological effects of illegal drinking can be disastrous.In addition to psychological problems, the secrecy of underage drinking can make it unsafe. Concentrating all the alcohol for the week into a single party leads underage drinkers to consume 90% of their alcohol through binge drinking. The drinking age also leaves inexperienced drinkers without experienced friends and family to keep an eye on them.
4. Increased enforcement would make things worse, not better.
People who defend the drinking age like to say that if we simply enforced it more, nearly all of the problems caused by underage drinking would stop. But this is not true. Currently, the drinking age turns 7.7 million Americans into lawbreakers. The vast majority of these are never caught. Despite the harsh punishments for underage drinkers, only 11 in 1,000 instances of underage drinking actually results in an arrest. Even if we arrested ten times as many people as we do now (which would be extremely difficult and expensive), it would still not be enough to deter underage drinking.The law is simply unrealistic, and yet people would rather see it routinely disobeyed than see it repealed.
5. If you can have adult responsibilities at 18, why can't you vote?
Once you turn 18, you are legally an adult. With this freedom, comes many responsibilities. You can enter into legal contracts, be tried as an adult and be sent to an adult prison, and raise or adopt children. Eighteen-year-olds are employed in a number of jobs where other people’s lives are at stake, such as EMTs or firefighters. And of course, they take on one of the most dangerous jobs in world: active military duty. If people under 21 can make such sacrifices for the country, as well as living independently, raising families, and engaging in all sorts of adult activities, then we should not be kept out of certain bars and restaurants and stores as though we were second-class citizens.
6. We protect the freedoms of people who are far more at risk than underage drinkers.
When you sit down at a bar or restaurant and order a shot of vodka, the server will only ask your age. They won’t ask you if you have a personal history of alcoholism, even though if you did, a single slip could seriously harm you as well as others. They won’t ask you if you’re pregnant, even though the CDC strongly recommends that pregnant women avoid alcohol completely. They won’t even ask if you’ve been convicted of an alcohol-related crime, such as drunk driving, child abuse, or sexual assault. In fact, in some places you can legally walk into a bar or restaurant carrying a loaded gun, take a seat, and order drink after drink until you’re visibly intoxicated—as long as you’re over 21.
7. The highest drinking age in the world hasn't put us ahead of other countries.
The United States is one of only a handful of countries that sets its drinking age to 21. This higher drinking age has not put us ahead of other developed countries in any way. The United States has worse traffic accident statistics than similar countries that set their drinking age at 18. The United States has a higher prevalence of alcohol-related problems such as alcohol-use disorders alcohol dependence, and harmful use of alcohol than countries with lower drinking ages.
8. Alcohol is no worse for young people than other legal drugs.
As a drug, alcohol is relatively safe for humans, compared to many newer prescription drugs that we routinely give to children. The effects of alcohol on the human body are well-known, with records reaching back thousands of years. However, the effects of newer prescription drugs such as Ritalin, antidepressants and cough medicines are typically either not fully known, or known to be just as bad as those of moderate amounts of alcohol, or worse.
9. Drinking is no more deadly for young people than for anyone else.
Underage drinkers don’t deserve such a bad reputation. According to the CDC, people aged 12-20 drink our fair share of alcohol, even though it’s illegal. In other words, this 11% of the population also drinks 11% of the alcohol. Yet despite drinking our fair share, teens and young adults account for less than our fair share of deaths from alcohol poisoning (only 5%). Older adults are much more vulnerable. In fact, 75% of deaths from alcohol poisoning happen between the ages of 45 and 54. This could be evidence that young drinkers are in some ways less vulnerable to the risks of alcohol than older drinkers.Young people are also unfairly singled out for drunk driving. About 25% of people aged 18-21 do not even have driver’s licenses, let alone cars. Many more have licenses, but either choose not to drive or do not have opportunities to drive. This means that the drunk driving argument for the drinking age does not even apply to at least a quarter of the population.
10. The drinking age does not address the dangers of alcohol for the most vulnerable population: older drinkers.
Middle-aged adults are in some ways uniquely vulnerable to the dangers of alcohol. For example, they are often adjusting to new forms of pressure in their careers, their families, or their health. These pressures are often called the “midlife crisis”: a transition that puts more people at risk for alcoholism. On top of these new risk factors, alcohol can no longer be an object of curiosity or experimentation for most middle-aged people. Too often, alcohol has become familiar, routine, like a boring job or a loveless marriage. When older people get drunk, they run a greater risk of doing it without thinking, as part of a routine that no longer interests or excites them. These new psychological risk factors may help to explain why middle age often marks the onset of alcoholism, along with a large spike in deaths from alcohol poisoning. Of course, everybody responds to middle age and to alcohol differently, but our society needs to recognize that age and alcohol can be an even more deadly combination than youth and alcohol.
National Youth Rights Association
