Should the United States Lower the Minimum Legal Drinking Age?
A White Paper
Christian Lupica
12/18/2014
Table of Contents
Executive Summary……………………………………………………………...3
History……………………………………………………………………………4
Recent Movements to Lower the Drinking Age.…………………...………………5
Arguments for Lowering the Drinking Age……………..…………………………7
Underage Binge Drinking………………………………………………….7
Forbidden Fruit Effect……………………………………………………..8
Drunk driving and other problems related to irresponsible drinking………10
Other Problems Related to Irresponsible Drinking………………...………12
Regulation Alcohol Consumption………………………………………………...13
Conclusion………………………………………………………………………...15
2
Executive Summary
The role of government preventing the consumption of alcohol began with the
Prohibition era. In the current day, we have found ourselves in a neoprohibitionist era where
those deemed ‘adults’ are unable to purchase and consume alcohol due to government regulation.
In this paper I attempt to argue why reducing the minimum legal drinking age to 18 would be
more beneficial to the safety of the young adults in America. By making the drinking age 21, we
have forced over half the drinking population in United States college universities into drinking
situations where they are more likely to drink heavily and are forced to drink in uncomfortable
and unsafe conditions. The 21 minimum drinking age also makes it extremely difficult for
university administration and campus safety officers to properly protect their students from
unsafe drinking as they have to constantly flirt around the minimum legal drinking age law.
3
History
The history of the United States government having a role in the prevention of alcohol
consumption dates back to the prohibition era in the 1920s. The Eighteenth Amendment, which
passed on January 16, 1919, created a nationwide ban on the sale, production, and transportation
of alcoholic beverages, with some states going as far to making consumption of alcoholic
beverages illegal.1 While the prohibition succeeded in lowering the amount of alcohol drank by
the American people, it led to a high level of secretive and underground drinking in speakeasy
clubs.1 This underground drinking culture also sparked an increased level of organized criminal
activity.2
Prohibition ended with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment on December 5,
1933.1 After the amendment passed, states were allowed to set their own minimum legal drinking
ages (MLDA). While most states initially set their minimum legal drinking ages to 21, some
states choose 18 while others set no age.3 (Table 1)5 It wasn’t until the 1970s and the Vietnam
War that many states began to question the rationality of a minimum legal drinking age of 21.
Many people disagreed with the logic of having 18-year-olds who, at the time, were ineligible to
vote or legally drink being drafting to fight and risk their lives in the Vietnam War.3 Once the
government passed the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, decreasing the voting age to 18, it was
naturally followed by 29 states lowering their minimum legal drinking age to 18, 19, or 20.3
However, with studies revealing an increase in car accident deaths that were attributed to
the lower minimum legal drinking age, states began to increase their minimum legal drinking
ages back up to 19, 20, and 21.3 The government stepped in in 1984 with the National Minimum
Legal Drinking Act, which “requires that States prohibit persons under 21 years of age from
purchasing or publicly possessing alcoholic beverages as a condition of receiving State highway
4
funds.” 4 This act, written by New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg and heavily influenced by
the recently founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), meant that any states that
refused to increase their minimum legal drinking age to 21 would lose 10% of all federal
highway construction funds.3,4 Since the National Minimum Legal Drinking Act still technically
allowed the state to choose its own minimum legal drinking age, the act did not violate the
Twenty-First Amendment. However, due to the threat of large cuts in funding, by 1995 all 50
states had increased their drinking ages to 21.3 (Table 2)5
Recent Movements to Lower the Drinking Age
Since the passing of the National Minimum Legal Drinking Act, there have been multiple
groups who disagree with the minimum legal drinking age being 21. These groups include: the
National Youth Rights Association, the Amethyst Initiative, Students for Sensible Drug Policy,
and Choose Responsibly. Both Choose Responsibly and the Amethyst Initiative were founded by
Dr. John McCardell Jr., who was the previous president of Middlebury College.6 In 2004,
following his retirement as president of Middlebury, McCardell wrote an Op-Ed in the New
York Times titled “What Your College President Didn’t Tell You.” In his piece, McCardell
called the 21-year-old-drinking age “bad social policy and terrible law,” claiming that “campuses
have become, depending on the enthusiasm of local law enforcement, either arms of the law or
havens from the law.” 7 As a president of a college in the United States, McCardell watched what
he claimed to be “our latter-day prohibitionists” not actually stopping underage drinking, but
driving drinking “behind closed doors and underground.” 7 Because of this sentiment towards the
National Minimum Legal Drinking Act, McCardell and other who share his views are actively
5
trying to spread awareness about their opinions on why the drinking age should be lowered. For
example, Choose Responsibility’s proposal states:
“Choose Responsibility supports a series of changes to treat 18, 19, and 20 yearolds as the young adults the law otherwise says they are. Current drinking laws
infantilize young adults. We should not be surprised, then, by infantile behavior
from otherwise responsible adults.
We support a series of changes that will allow 18-20 year-old adults to purchase,
possess and consume alcoholic beverages.
We propose a multi-faceted approach that combines education, certification, and
provisional licensing for 18-20 year-old high school graduates who choose to
consume alcohol.
We envision an overarching program that combines appropriate incentive and
reward for responsible, lawful behavior by adolescents, and punitive measures for
illegal, irresponsible behavior.” 6
Currently in almost every state in the U.S., when a person turns 18 they are considered an adult,
or in the “age of majority.” 12 Upon turning 18, one is privileged with certain new rights, while
also forced to take on new responsibilities. 18 year olds in the United States are allowed to:
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vote;
to make a will and power of attorney;
to make their own end-of-life decisions;
to be an organ donor;
to sign a contract in their own name;
to obtain medical treatment without parental consent;
to enlist in the armed forces without parental consent;
to be completely independent from their parents;
to apply for credit in their own name;
and are required to take on the responsibilities of:
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being tried as an adult in criminal court;
no longer having their parents required to support them;
be eligible for jury duty;
be sued by others;
registered with Selective Services (males only). 12
6
Yet after being allowed and required to take on all of these responsibilities, and despite being
considered “adults,” the United States Government feels the need to disallow the 18-20 year age
group from purchasing and consuming alcohol. As said in Choose Responsibilities mission
statement, this law is infantilizing young adults and the national minimum legal drinking age
needs to be reconsidered.
Arguments for Lowering the Drinking Age
The National Minimum Legal Drinking Act has been in effect for 30 years now, and has
been ineffective in stopping those who are underage from obtaining and consuming alcoholic
beverages. While there have been perceived upsides to the drinking age being 21 in the United
States, advocates of lowering the drinking 18 feel that many of the statistics are not as great as
they appear, and often overlook the many downsides brought about by forcing 18-20 year olds to
consume alcohol in secret.
Underage Binge Drinking
Binge Drinking is defined by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
(NIH) as “a pattern of drinking that brings blood alcohol concentration (BAC) level to 0.08 g/dL.
This typically occurs after 4 drinks for women and 5 drinks for men – in about 2 hours.” 8 This is
the type of drinking that is most concerning, especially when underage students are engaging in
binge drinking. Binge drinking is more often than not the case with underage drinking, as out of
the alcohol drank in the United States by the 18-20 year old age group, 96% of it is consumed
through binge drinking.9 Also, when compared to legal age students, 22% of all students under
21 compared to 18% of students over the age of 21 are considered ‘heavy drinkers.’13 These are
not statistics that are happening by accident. With the minimum legal drinking age at 21, those
7
who are 18-20 and in a college environment where alcohol is extremely prevalent are being
forced into drinking in unsafe manners due to their inability to legally drink alcohol in public.
While those 21 and older can freely drink at their own pace while at a bar or party, those under
21 are often found trying to get as drunk as possible as quickly as possible right before going out
for the night. This often includes heavily pregaming and doing shots in their dorm rooms to stay
drunk the entire night, which is the kind of drinking that leads to unsafe levels of intoxication.
This is especially dangerous for new college freshman, with student expectations and social
pressures felt by freshman at the beginning of their first year often leading to engaging in heavy
drinking.10 Learning one’s own drinking limits is something that comes with experience, and this
experience is one not afforded to the majority of college students drinking for their first time.
Barrett Seaman, current president of Choose Responsibility, in an interview with Boston
University Today, discusses a eureka moment he had when visiting McGill University in
Montreal, where the drinking age is 18. However, McGill University also has around 2,000
American students enrolled as undergraduates, and Seaman paid attention to how these
undergraduates compared to those in the same age group who stayed in the United States.15 His
discovery was that there was a “relative civility” at McGill as opposed to U.S. campuses. At
McGill alcohol “wasn’t a big deal, [students] could go down to the bars in Montreal and drink or
go to the clubs…it was an open culture.”15 Seaman also commented on how students and faculty
in Canada intermingled with alcohol, which is something we rarely find here in the United States,
especially not with younger undergraduates.15 While McGill University was able to have
moderating behavior of the faculty, the college campuses in the United States are filled with a
“whole generation of young people learning to drink from themselves, instead of from people
who’ve had some experience with it.”15 This realization of the perverse culture around collegiate
8
drinking in the United States is what drove Seaman and other like him that the 21 age limit was
part of the problem.
Forbidden Fruit Effect
By forbidding students under 21 from legally drinking alcohol, the National Minimum
Legal Drinking Act has created a type of ‘forbidden fruit effect’ where underage students are
more likely to drink, and drink at higher quantities in rebellion for being told they cannot. This
effect can be seen through other similar anecdotes of overbearing parents disallowing their
children from having a certain thing to an extreme level, and as soon as that child is free from his
or her parents’ rules they overindulge in whatever had been restricted for them. For example,
when my mother was a child she was not allowed to eat Tastykakes while at home, and every
time she would visit her friend whose parents kept Tastykakes in the house, she would eat almost
an entire box herself. If instead my grandparents had taken the approach of giving my mother
sweets occasionally, she most likely would not have overindulged at every opportunity she had.
The same idea goes for alcohol, except alcohol has the added side-effect of being extremely
harmful or even deadly when consumed in massive quantities. Young students are not just eating
too much candy in this situation, they are damaging their bodies and brains, sending themselves
to the hospital, and dying from drinking too much alcohol or from dangerous alcohol-induced
events. It is important for young adults to learn their limits and how to drink responsibly, and
while alcohol responsibility courses or information sessions are helpful, learning one’s limits for
drinking alcohol is something gained through experience.
In 1987-1988, shortly after the National Minimum Legal Drinking Act was put in place,
Ruth Engs and David Hanson performed an experiment about reactance theory at 56 colleges in
the United States. They wanted to perform a test to determine if reactance theory (which suggests
9
that attempting to prevent alcohol consumption amount underage college students will lead to
increased drinking among such students) was actually the result of making 21 the legal drinking
age.14 They presented students with an anonymous student alcohol questionnaire and created a
sample of students that mirrored the overall demographic characteristics of the entire student
population at the time.14 In their results, they determined that there was “a significant difference
between the drinking patterns of underage students compared to those of legal age. Of underage
students, 81.2% were drinkers compared to 75.3% of students at legal age. Also, a higher
proportion of underage students were heavy drinkers (24.09%) compared to those of legal age
(15.39%).” (See Table 3)14 Their experiment’s evidence supported the reactance explanation.
Drinking alcohol was, and still is a prevalent and central aspect to the collegiate experience, and
making the minimum legal drinking age 21 has not changed that for students of any age group.
Drunk Driving
The issue of drunk driving is an area in which the United States has made great progress
in. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that there has been a reduction
of around 850-900 deaths per year from drunk driving (Figure 1). However, there is debate as to
the exact cause that these lives saved can be attributed to. Mothers Against Drunk Driving
attempts to cite the legal alcohol consumption age of 21 as the main contributor to this decrease
in drunken driving accidents. However, while the National Minimum Legal Drinking Act has
certainly had a role in decreasing drunk driving amongst the underage population, it is
impossible to assert this cause and effect relationship between increasing the drinking age and
reductions in drunk driving accidents, as many other factors have played a major role in the
reduction of these accidents.6 The pattern of reduced drunk driving incidents actually began in
the early 1970s, which was years before the National Minimum Legal Drinking Act was passed.6
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Since then, there have been great technological advances in vehicle safety and drunk driving
laws have become much more severe, which are both important factors in reduced accident
fatalities and drunk driving.6 Drunk driving has become an ever-more-so publicized and
recognized problem in our country, and because of this we have made strives as a nation to
reduce it. There have been countless legislative changes, including: mandatory seat belt laws,
lower BAC limits, stricter automobile safety standards, sobriety checkpoints on highways, and
stricter law enforcement, all which have played a role in reducing fatal drunk driving incidents.6
To say increasing the minimum legal drinking age to 21 is the sole, or even the main reason of
reduced drunk driving accidents seems like a difficult point to argue for, since as a community
the United States has been striving to increase both the awareness about drunk driving and the
safety of our drivers. Figure 2 below shows a graph comparing the percent of 18-20 year olds
who could drink legally in the United States to the death rate due to motor vehicle accidents per
10,000 persons in the United States per year.16 The graph does reveal a substantial decrease in
18-20 year old nighttime vehicle accidents over time as the drinking age is increased. However,
the graphical evidence that increase the drinking age was the main factor at reducing motor
vehicle deaths is not completely convincing.16 First, while the number of 18-20 year old who can
legally drink declines abruptly as different states adapted their laws, the amount of nighttime car
accidents in the same age group declined at a much slower rate.16 Second, as stated earlier and
seen again in the graph, the number of 18-20 year olds getting in fatal car accidents was already
declining before the implementation of the National Minimum Legal Drinking Act.16 Therefore,
while increasing the minimum legal drinking age to 21 most likely did play a part in reducing
fatal drunk driving accidents, it is doubtful that the drinking age was the sole factor for this
decrease.
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Other Problems Related to Irresponsible Drinking
While there has certainly been a decrease in alcohol-related car accidents, advocates for
the legal drinking age to be 21, especially Mothers Against Drunk Driving, often only focus on
drunk driving statistics and overlook data about other problems related to irresponsible drinking
among young adults. For example, Ruth Engs’s study conducted a few years after the
introduction of the National Minimum Legal Drinking Act cited increases in students reporting
vomiting after drinking, cutting class after drinking, missing class because of hangover, getting
lower grades because of drinking, and engaging in a fight after drinking.13 Choose Responsibility
has also found that raising the drinking age to 21 has had no apparent effect on other fatalities
concerning alcohol, including alcohol-related suicides, accidents, drowning, murders, and
alcohol poisoning rates.6 These are all problems just as harmful and fatal as drunk driving and
become more likely in an underground binge-drinking culture.
Another prevalent and severe issued closely tied to underage drinking is the problem of
sexual assault on college campuses. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center,
it is estimated that 20% to 25% of women will either be the victim or attempted victim of rape on
college campuses.18 There are many ways in which alcohol increases the percentage of women in
college who are sexually assaulted. The most basic and obvious way is the woman drinking too
much alcohol and being unable to effectively resist a sexual assault.19 When a woman becomes
too intoxicated, she becomes a much easier target for potential rapists looking for sexually
available women, and because of this there have been many studies that have connected heavy
drinking with increased sexual assault risk.19 As discussed before, the current environment for
underage drinkers in college requires them to drink aggressively in less socially regulated
environments, like a dorm room, an off-campus house, or a fraternity party.17 It is then no
12
surprise to hear that sexual assaults on college campuses were most likely to occur in September,
October and November, on Friday or Saturday, and between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m and
that Freshmen and sophomores have been found to be at a greater risk than juniors and seniors.18
These facts directly correlate to the previous concerns raised about keeping the drinking age at
21; younger undergraduate students, especially at the beginning of their college career, are much
less likely to be able to handle their alcohol responsibly. Whether it be on the side of a freshman
girl drinking too much during her first time consuming alcohol and finding herself in a
compromising situation, or a first-year male becoming too intoxicated, misinterpreting a sexual
cue, and intentionally or unintentionally committing sexual assault.
Regulating Alcohol Consumption
Alongside reducing the legal drinking age to 18, there are other regulations involving
alcohol and drunk driving that can be made to make drinking, especially as a young adult, safer.
Regardless if the minimum legal drinking age is 21 or 18, 18-20 year olds are going to drink, and
the focus of discipline both in and out of college needs to be focused on poor behavior as
opposed just to those consuming alcohol and causing no harm. Too often campus police are too
worried about busting underage kids walking around with beer or casually drinking in their
rooms. Instead the focus needs to be on those abusing alcohol and causing severe issues such as
vandalism, sexual assault, and drunk driving. One of my main issues with having the minimum
legal drinking age at 21 is that is splits college campuses into two distinct groups and creates an
awkward environment for all parties involved: underage drinkers, legal drinkers, staff,
administration, and campus authorities. In the current system, if a campus police officer were to
supervise a party to make sure everyone was safe and drinking responsibly, they would have to
13
overlook tens if not hundreds of underage drinking violations being committed. If the law is so
restrictive and unrealistic that our own police officers are forced to ignore it in order to do their
jobs efficiently and keep student bodies safe, why does it exist? If the entire college population
was able to legally drink, it would open so many safer avenues for underclassmen to acquire and
consume alcohol and would also administration and campus safety officers to focus on keeping
students safe instead of prohibiting underage students from drinking all together.
When considering drunk driving, many changes can and should be made to both the laws
and vehicle technology to cut down on people of all ages driving while intoxicated. This is the
issue where both sides agree, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving has provided many great ideas
so that “enforcement will work so well there are no offenders to catch, because no one is drunk
driving.”20 First, MADD suggests implementing more sobriety checkpoints, which are proven to
reduce fatalities by 20%.20 If these checkpoints were more common people would be less likely
to drive drunk in fear of running into a checkpoint and being arrested. Second, MADD suggests
requiring any drunk driving offender to have an ignition interlock, which does not let a car start
unless the driver blows into the device and there is no trace of alcohol in his or her system,
installed into their vehicle. The average drunk driver has driven drunk 80 times before their first
arrest, and this would prevent past offenders from becoming repeat offenders.20 There are also
new technologies being tested to potentially put an end to drunk driving. One is a system that can
read your BAC through your fingertips while the other can read one’s BAC through their
breath.20 Either technology being able to be implemented into a vehicle would be a huge strive in
putting an end to drunk driving. Lastly, proper education is always important in preventing
things like drunk driving from occurring. Regardless if the drinking age is 18 or 21, young adults
14
need to be taught the dangers and risks of getting into a vehicle with someone who has drank or
driving a vehicle themselves while intoxicated.
Conclusion
In conclusion, while the National Minimum Legal Drinking Act had intentions of making
a safer environment for young adults to consume alcohol, based on the nature of the college
systems it has forced a new prohibitionesque era where underage college students are forced to
consume alcohol in the secrecy of their dorm rooms. This has led to an increased culture of binge
drinking by underage students, as they are unable to experience alcohol in a legal and safe setting
before they are thrown into the collegiate drinking scene. Based on the evidence in this white
paper, I propose that lowering the drinking age to 18 or 19 would be highly beneficial in
reducing the amount of alcohol related issues pertaining to the 18-20 year old drinkers in the
United States.
15
Tables
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Table 3: Drinking Patterns of all Students by Age Group in Percent
Drinking
Classification
Abstainer
Infrequent Drinker
Light Drinker
Moderate Drinker
Moderate/heavy
Drinker
Heavy Drinker
Under 21 years
(n=1,987)
18.8
9.6
9.5
17.8
21 Years +
(n=1,388)
24.7
11.0
11.1
18.2
20.4
19.8
24.0
15.3*
17
Figure 216
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