Some states considering lowering drinking age

[nbiggershaft]

States weigh lowering drinking age - USATODAY.com

States weigh lowering drinking ageBy Judy Keen, USA TODAY
Debate over lowering the drinking age is heating up in several states, fueled in part by legislators who contend that men and women who are old enough to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan are responsible enough to buy alcohol legally.
Legislation introduced in Kentucky, Wisconsin and South Carolina would lower the drinking age for military personnel only. A planned ballot initiative in Missouri would apply to everyone 18 and older. An initiative in the works in South Dakota would allow all 19- and 20-year-olds to buy low-alcohol beer.
Vermont's legislature is considering a task force to study the issue. A Minnesota bill would allow anyone 18 and older to buy alcohol in bars or restaurants, but not in liquor stores until they're 21.
MORE: Vermont mulls lower drinking age
"There's a public interest in reopening this debate … and the idea is picking up steam" says John McCardell, a former president of Vermont's Middlebury College who founded Choose Responsibility. The non-profit group supports allowing 18- to 20-year-olds to drink legally after they complete an alcohol education program.
Proponents face opposition from Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and a potentially costly obstacle: Congress voted in 1984 to penalize states that set the drinking age below 21 with forfeiture of 10% of their federal highway funds. That threat "may prove to be a deal-breaker" for his bill, says Minnesota state Rep. Chris DeLaForest.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says laws setting the drinking age at 21 have cut traffic fatalities involving drivers ages 18-20 by 13%. "We welcome the attention to the drinking age," says MADD CEO Chuck Hurley. "The data is in fact overwhelming."
Those laws haven't ended underage drinking, says state Sen. Hinda Miller, who wants a task force to study the issue and report to Vermont's legislature next year. "I want to start talking about it," she says.
A 2007 Gallup Poll found that 77% of Americans oppose lowering the drinking age to 18, but state Rep. Fletcher Smith, sponsor of a bill that would allow military personnel 18 and older to buy alcohol in South Carolina, disagrees. "If you can take a shot on the battlefield," he says, "you ought to be able to take a shot of beer legally."
State Rep. David Floyd, whose bill would apply to Kentucky troops 18 and older, says it's "common sense to recognize as full adults the young men and women who serve in the military."
At a U.S. Senate hearing last fall on the issue, deputy transportation secretary Thomas Barrett, a retired Coast Guard vice admiral, said, "I hear this bandied about that if you are old enough to fight for your country, you are old enough to have a beer. … I don't think it's the same type of maturity."
Missouri 18 To Drink has concluded it can't collect the 100,000 signatures needed by May to put its initiative on November's ballot and is now aiming for the 2010 election, says organizer Michael Mikkelsen. South Dakota's legislature "is understandably apprehensive about the topic," says lawyer N. Bob Pesall, who drafted that state's petition.
"We're going to need a groundswell," says state Rep. Terry Musser, sponsor of the Wisconsin bill that would allow troops 19 and older to drink legally. "We're going to have to have real people out there say 'enough is enough.' "
Alexander Wagenaar, an epidemiology professor at the University of Florida who studies alcohol issues, doubts that will happen. Interest in lowering the drinking age is "a surprising trend," he says, because studies consistently show that raising it "has substantially reduced the amount of drinking and the amount of damage due to drinking."



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I agree with this change. 21 has always seemed an arbitrary number, and inconsistant with how we define an adult. The only justification for not allowing 18 year olds to me would be to keep it out of high schools. But you would really only need an age of 19 for that.

[Thorgrim]

This creates so many problems on so many levels...would this stop underage drinking? No, 17 year olds would drink like crazy, and they drive, and let's be honest, a lot more 16 and 17 year olds have access to 18 dumb year olds than dumb 21 year olds

Besides, all the states won't comply and the federal government certainly won't...which creates all those border crossing problems

it's a tangle

21 is fine, you have to wait until you're 21 to gamble everywhere

I mean i know this board is full of people in their mid-late 20s, how fucking stupid were you when you were 17 just turning 18, don't lie

what's dumb, if you ask me, is making 18 year olds "full fledged adults"...now don't get me wrong I think it's great that they can vote (but they don't anyway) but everything else is stupid, the idea that 18 year olds are intellectually and emotionally mature is silly...I'd say most Americans don't become at least semi-mature adults until they hit 22-23...you need about 4-5 years out of high school, either working a job or at a university

[nbiggershaft]

Originally Posted by Thorgrim

This creates so many problems on so many levels...would this stop underage drinking? No, 17 year olds would drink like crazy, and they drive, and let's be honest, a lot more 16 and 17 year olds have access to 18 dumb year olds than dumb 21 year olds

Kids who want to drink underage can find easy ways. You aren't preventing anything by making the age 21. I also don't agree with the assertion that 18 year olds drinking legally mean more 17 year olds will drink illegally.

Originally Posted by Thorgrim

Besides, all the states won't comply and the federal government certainly won't...which creates all those border crossing problems

it's a tangle

21 is fine, you have to wait until you're 21 to gamble everywhere

You can gamble in most states under 21.
Minimum Gambling Age

Originally Posted by Thorgrim

I mean i know this board is full of people in their mid-late 20s, how fucking stupid were you when you were 17 just turning 18, don't lie

what's dumb, if you ask me, is making 18 year olds "full fledged adults"...now don't get me wrong I think it's great that they can vote (but they don't anyway) but everything else is stupid, the idea that 18 year olds are intellectually and emotionally mature is silly...I'd say most Americans don't become at least semi-mature adults until they hit 22-23...you need about 4-5 years out of high school, either working a job or at a university

what random age would you decide then? 21?

at 18 a person has the right to vote, manage their finances, drive, serve in the military, rent/own housing. If people aren't mature enough to handle alcohol by 18 then that is just sheltered parenting. We can say, well if most kids are sheltered from responsibility then, lets say, 3 years at college will make them responsible adults? That's not only an obnoxiously inconsistent joke to try to set a personal responsibility age off of a certain time away from the parents, but it is also ineffective as underage drinking laws aren't even a consideration for college aged kids.

[Thorgrim]

the big ones, AC and LV, you have to be 21...good luck with those indian casinos...

[Thorgrim]

Just because the state gives someone the right to do all these things at 18 doesn't automatically inject them with some sort of maturity of even complete development

A kid who was 17 and just turned 18...and snuck some wine from his parents cellar, got drunk and then went out and punched a guy he thought was hitting on a girl he had a crush on...that's just stupid kid stuff...you don't send him away to prison for 5 years because in the end...honestly, he's just a kid and he made a really dumb decision

Some 35 year old does that, I'm not saying 5 years is the best solution, but we all know that he's completely grown up and been that way for years, he knew exactly what he was getting himself into at every step

Also, should that be on his record the rest of his life...destroying his career (the 18 year old) or should he be given a lot of the chances 17 year olds get

There is a reason why when retired and current colonels/genrals talk about 18-21 year old privates dying, they often use the word "kids" because they are kids

However they do not speak that way about 23-25 year old corporals

[7960]

Originally Posted by nbiggershaft

I agree with this change. 21 has always seemed an arbitrary number,...

Of course it's arbitrary. So is 35 to be president, 18 to vote, 16 to fuck, 65 to retire, 100 to have willard scott wish you happy birthday on TV.........they're all arbitrary.

But you would really only need an age of 19 for that.

There are plenty of 19 year old seniors in high school. So make it 20.....there are *WAY* too many 20 year olds with 19 year old friends still in high school. Make it 21.......now you're 2+ years away from high school so it's getting better.


Here's a good write-up on why it's 21.

Support of 21 minimum drinking age law

[Donkey®]

I prefer to make it 30 for males, 25 for females.

[lew]

Originally Posted by 7960

Of course it's arbitrary. So is 35 to be president, 18 to vote, 16 to fuck, 65 to retire, 100 to have willard scott wish you happy birthday on TV.........they're all arbitrary.

There are plenty of 19 year old seniors in high school. So make it 20.....there are *WAY* too many 20 year olds with 19 year old friends still in high school. Make it 21.......now you're 2+ years away from high school so it's getting better.


Here's a good write-up on why it's 21.

Support of 21 minimum drinking age law

I stopped reading at "Convened by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, American Medical Association, National Transportation Safety Board, and Insurance Institute for Highway Safety".


Give me a non-biased source of why it should be 21 and I'll read that.

[motivez]

And you think the American Medical Association, National Transportation Safety Board, and Insurance Institute for Highway Safety are biased in favor of 21 how exactly?

MADD I can see as a biased source, but the others? Give me a break

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by lew

I stopped reading at "Convened by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, American Medical Association, National Transportation Safety Board, and Insurance Institute for Highway Safety".


Give me a non-biased source of why it should be 21 and I'll read that.

I don't understand the problem here. Can you elaborate?

[7960]

Originally Posted by lew

I stopped reading at "Convened by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, American Medical Association, National Transportation Safety Board, and Insurance Institute for Highway Safety".


Give me a non-biased source of why it should be 21 and I'll read that.

here

Protecting teens from the dangers of alcohol use and abuse:
wishful thinking versus science

Convened by American Medical Association, National Transportation Safety Board, and Insurance Institute for Highway Safety to support 21 minimum drinking age

Presentation by Adrian Lund, IIHS president

October 9, 2007 • Washington, DC

In 1972, at a conference on road safety in Canberra, Australia, William Haddon Jr., M.D., the first head of what is now the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and President of IIHS from 1969-1985, talked about the beginning of a transition

"away from a pre-scientific period. That is, from a period in which folk culture has dominated — in which virtually everyone, both in and out of public life, has been a self-certified expert with his own pet, dogmatically advanced panacea — in which the notion has been virtually absent that public and private conclusions, pronouncements and measures to reduce the losses should be based on well-done, carefully scientific determinations of relevance and efficacy rather than on the unsubstantiated assertions of some individual or group."

We are here today because this transition to science-based approaches to reducing the deaths and injuries from motor vehicle crashes is not yet complete. Thirty-five years later, John M. McCardell, Jr. has mounted a campaign to reduce the drinking age from 21 to 18 in the United States. His justification — a desire to reduce the clandestine and sometimes biologically dangerous levels of alcohol consumption among 18-20 year-olds — is laudable. However, his reasoning about what works is quintessentially pre-scientific. Highway safety policies need to be grounded in solid research, not wishful thinking. His arguments are demonstrably wrong. My comments today are limited to his two central theses:

* that the benefits of the 21-year-old drinking age are unproven; and
* that alcohol education for teens promises to be more effective in dealing with the problem of teen alcohol use and abuse.

Both theses are contradicted by fact.
Teen crashes vary with drinking age laws

On his website, Mr. McCardell says, "Advocates of the 21-year-old drinking age have long argued that the decrease in fatalities was a result of the lowered drinking age but cannot offer a cause and effect relationship."

That view ignores 30 years of research.

Status Report, April 9, 1974
Image of Status Report article, April 9, 1974

Status Report, July 15, 1981
Image of Status Report, July 15, 1981

Status Report, July 15, 1981
Image of Status Report, December 18, 1995

The truth is, the cause and effect are clear. lf we lower the drinking age, we will be killing more teens on the highway. Actions among the states in lowering, raising, lowering, and raising again the age at which it is legal to purchase alcohol have to evaluate the effects of these changes on motor vehicle crashes.

In the 1960s and 70s, in the context of the Vietnam war and lowering the voting age to 18, many states also lowered the drinking age from 21 to 18.

History of US minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) laws
Image of minimum drinking age laws slides

IIHS's first study in 1974 looked at two states and one Canadian province that lowered the drinking age, carefully comparing their experience to that of adjacent states that did not change. That study showed that the number of 15-20 year-olds involved in fatal crashes increased in the jurisdictions that lowered the drinking age.

Subsequently, in the late 1970s, states began to increase drinking ages again. Again, it was possible to compare states that made this change to states that didn't. Again, we saw a change related to the drinking age — this time, fatal crash rates declined as teen drinking and teen drinking and driving declined.

IIHS has been a leader in studying the effect of drinking age, but it hasn't been alone.

The CDC identified many more strong, empirical studies examining the effects of either raising or lowering the minimum drinking age.

CDC review of evidence regarding interventions to reduce alcohol-impaired driving
Shults et al., 2001
Image of CDC study slide

Although there's variation the effects are consistent: deaths go up when the drinking age is lowered and they go down when it is raised. The 21-year-old drinking age is saving lives.
Drinking education won't counteract easier availability of alcohol

While ignoring the vast literature confirming the public health benefit of the 21-year-old minimum drinking age, Mr. McCardell asserts that drinking education could effectively supplant and improve upon 21-year-old drinking laws in combating the problem of alcohol among 18-20 year-olds. What's the evidence?

Mr. McCardell offers none. Nor is there much in the way of evidence about what effect drinking education might have on 18-20 year-olds. However, there is evidence about the effects of driver education, which offers some insights about how drinking education and a drinking license, as recommended by McCardell, might affect teens.

It isn't encouraging.

Status Report, May 12, 1984
Image of Status Report, May 12, 1984

Percent of students with crashes
by type of driver education
Image of percent of students with crashes by type of driver education slide

DeKalb County, Georgia test of model driver education
Lund et al., 1986

* Students assigned to SPC were at significantly greater hazard of crashing and of receiving traffic violations than control students.
* No evidence that SPC reduced the per capita likelihood of crashes or violations
* SPC drivers had more crashes and violations despite the fact that they were more skilled when licensed.
* High school driver education courses do not decrease the crashes and violations among teenagers as a group.
* Greater availability of driver's education leads to earlier licensure which in turn leads to more crashes and violations per capita.

Again, IIHS has done much of the research on driver education, a fair task since, in years past, much of the funding for driver education in high schools came from insurers. However, when IIHS studied the effects of driver education carefully in the 1970s, a main finding was that teen crashes tended to be higher when high school driver education was available. In the late 1970s, this correlation was confirmed when Connecticut stopped state funding for high school driver education, and many schools in the state dropped the course. The result was fewer teen crashes, based on our study that compared those schools with schools that continued to fund driver education locally.

In response to criticism that these driver education courses were too simplistic, the US DOT spent millions to develop a model course. It was called the Safe Performance Curriculum and was submitted to a proper study in DeKalb County, Georgia. When compared to other high school students who received either no driver education or a more basic information course, the result was the same: SPC increased the number of teens getting licensed and the number involved in crashes. This is an unintended consequence of driver education — it can encourage earlier licensure that is not offset by any improvement in knowledge or skill.

Driver education can help drivers learn to operate vehicles and to understand why traffic laws are what they are. Driver education, however, is not itself an effective public health strategy. Drinking education will teach teens about alcohol, but it may only produce better educated drinking and driving teenagers while at the same time making our highways more dangerous. McCardell offers no scientific evidence to the contrary.
Summary

The scientific evidence is clear.

Lowering the legal age to purchase and consume alcohol to 18 would increase the number of 18-20 year-olds killed or injured in motor vehicle crashes.

Summary
What does the evidence show?

* Lowering the drinking age to 18 would increase the number of 18-20 year-olds dying on our nation’s highways
* There is no evidence that drinking education will offset these effects
o Evidence from driver education is that we could get more drinking teenagers as a result of drinking education as licensed teenagers will explain that schools have said they know how to drink

Others too would die in crashes involving drinking teenagers.

Experience with driver education suggests that drinking education wouldn't counteract this effect. In fact, one implication of driver education experience is that exposing students to drinking education could increase the number drinking. Receiving a license to drink could cause teens and some parents to conclude that the school thinks their teens will drink safely.

This is not the path to reducing the problem of teenage drinking — it is a proven formula for increasing the number of dead teens. Clandestine underage drinking is a problem, but lowering the drinking age is not a solution.

[thewise1]

I agree with this change. You say it's good to keep alcohol out of highschool, but hell, my wife got suspended for possession of such at one point So while I do agree it would be good to keep it out, it's not happening even now.

[nbiggershaft]

Originally Posted by 7960

Support of 21 minimum drinking age law

I'm not going to dispute the numbers there. Legal drinking increases the amount of people drinking and driving. But that is true at any age. We could bring back prohibition and see less drinking and driving altogether, probably moreso in people over 21 than the uniform drinking act did for under 21 drinking and driving. You are one of the biggest personal responsibility advocates on this board, would you accept that justification to ban alcohol altogether?

While the numbers show an decrease in underage drinking and driving, they also show no decrease in underage drinking, and they generally show an increase in binge drinking.

[nbiggershaft]

Some drinking and driving stats. Clearly we should ban drinking up to the age of 45.

[kombayn]

I think it should be 18, but it's really a preference of choice and 7960, not all states can you be 16 to fuck, in California it's 18 and in Hawaii it's 14 (with-in 5 years so you can't be older than 19) to fuck. It should really be the states choice. And for Donkey, god may we never have a candidate you like hold office.

[kinggovernor]

Originally Posted by Thorgrim

There is a reason why when retired and current colonels/genrals talk about 18-21 year old privates dying, they often use the word "kids" because they are kids

However they do not speak that way about 23-25 year old corporals

wat? Please provide link backing this up.

[7960]

Originally Posted by nbiggershaft

http://www.dui.com/dui-library/fatalities-accidents/statistics/dui-gallup-poll/resolveuid/d8da7c149de3e23d6ccf24cc6cccfe6d[/IMG]
http://www.dui.com/dui-library/fatalities-accidents/statistics/dui-gallup-poll/resolveuid/ea43d74e5bf69b8f52c82b81c16e421c[/IMG]

Some drinking and driving stats. Clearly we should ban drinking up to the age of 45.

yeah those are stupid stats. 18 year olds can't legally get alcohol so the numbers for how many drank and drove are going to be low no matter what.