Word: alcoholics
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Although arguments for lowering the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) are reasonably convincing, the US should not repeat its past mistakes. We have already experimented once with a lower MLDA, and the results should be enough to convince even college libertines of the wisdom of limiting alcohol to those over...
...Underage drinking will always be a problem, no matter where the MLDA is set. However, if it were set at 18, alcohol would spill over to high schools even more than it already does, and 13-to-17-year-olds would be more likely to drink at levels now associated with the 17-to-20-year-old college demographic. Although correlation is not causation, a 1978 study suggested high schoolers drank more, abstained less, and got drunk more often in those states with a MLDA...
...Teenagers have also been safer since 21 became the MLDA. The government estimates that the higher age saves up to 1,000 lives a year from drunk-driving accidents. During the 1970s, states that changed their drinking ages to 18 or 19 reported spikes in the frequency of alcohol-related crashes and fatalities. Likewise, New Zealand, which recently lowered its MLDA to 18, was rewarded with 12 percent more crashes involving alcohol among 18-to-19-year-olds and 14 percent more among 15- to-17-year-olds...
...logic would suggest, more legal access to alcohol also means more consumers. Almost all studies agree that states with higher MLDAs fostered citizens who drank less often than those in states with lower MLDAs, both before and after their 21st birthdays. The number of high-school seniors nationally who report binge drinking in the past two weeks has also fallen to below 30 percent on a consistent basis, after topping 40 percent every year from...
...Retired Massachusetts high school teacher Ann Marie Gagne recounted witnessing the proliferation of alcohol first-hand in the 1970s. The situation deteriorated to the point that one high-school senior “showed up for school so drunk that he couldn’t get out of his car.” Clearly, teenagers tipple for reasons other than alcohol’s illicit appeal. Although at times it might seem that underage drinking is so prevalent that the drinking age is irrelevant, in practice a higher MLDA does play a role in prevention...