McCardell personally believed the drinking age should be lowered to 18, in line with most of the world. Instead of using the blunt instrument of criminalization to control behavior, he advocated for a massive education campaign to teach young people how to avoid negative consequences like alcohol poisoning and dissuade them from drunk driving. He thought the way college kids learned to drink was dangerous, and that the 21 law was part of the problem. Caleb, who preferred to only use his first name because he belongs to an anonymous recovery support group, told Filter that the only education about drugs and alcohol he received in high school was from DARE officers who spoke to his science class.
Before Caleb graduated from high school in , college partying loomed large in his mind and he wanted experience drinking before he got there. The 21 law ultimately did not deter him from drinking, but it did prevent reality-based education. The 21 law ultimately did not deter him from drinking, but it did prevent reality-based education about alcohol and how to drink it without harming himself or others. Caleb continued to struggle with his drinking in college, until he found support through therapy and LGBTQ-friendly mutual-aid support groups.
The kind of excessive, unsupervised drinking Caleb engaged in throughout college was what most alarmed McCardell and many of his supporters — some of whom were parents who lost their kids due to college drinking escapades that turned deadly. But after gaining some traction and sparking a national debate, the Amethyst Initiative slowly fizzled out, and the drinking age debate fell out of the news cycle.
There is no one reason why McCardell and the college presidents failed, although a public feud with grieving mothers is an unenviable position for any campaign. Maybe the mountain of favorable public health research for the 21 law was too high a hurdle. Raising the drinking age is widely accepted to have caused a reduction in traffic fatalities , although this has sometimes been contested. According to the researchers, science definitively proves the 21 law has been good for society and improved youth drinking on a host of outcomes.
The case may be closed among researchers who study traffic safety and public health. But other scholars and experts believe there is ample reason to keep the drinking age debate open, and continually question any law that restricts the rights and liberties afforded to adults in the US. Across most of America, the age of majority—the age at which one is considered an adult—is Historians, criminal justice scholars and harm reductionists are among those who raise thorny questions and criticisms about the 21 minimum.
The Temple researchers quibble with the methods used to show that the 21 law itself is responsible for fewer traffic fatalities. Then there are questions like, what time of day was the crash? What was the weather? How experienced was the driver? Focusing the lens on proving this one law led to overwhelmingly positive outcomes is too narrow, argue the Temple scholars, who are instead interested in the moral and philosophical questions surrounding such a sweeping policy.
For starters, are criminal penalties the best line of attack to achieve a safer and healthier society? What if, they wonder, instead of criminal laws, the government and rest of society emphasized non-punitive strategies like harm reduction, higher taxes, breathalyzers in cars, sobriety checkpoints and — like McCardell argued for — scientifically validated health education for young people?
With all these in place instead of the 21 law, what would the outcomes look like? Research shows that one of the best ways to curb alcohol consumption is not through tough laws, but by raising prices through higher taxes. Higher prices are especially effective among younger people who are more sensitive to price fluctuations. And although such measures have been criticized for penalizing poorer people, recent research has disputed this indeed, richer people generally drink more.
A variety of perspectives criticize the 21 law. On ideological grounds, some despise the means by which the law came to be, arguing that it undermines federalism and that drinking age should be up to the states. Yet an essential question remains: Can a healthier and safer society be built without relying on punitive laws, criminal sanctions and restricting rights?
A minimum age of 21 is out of step with most of the world. Most provinces in Canada , for example, have a minimum of 19; Alberta, Quebec and Manitoba are set at 18 years. In Mexico, the minimum age is also 18, as it is in Australia and most of Western Europe.
Iraq and Sri Lanka are among a handful of other countries where the law is Next Up In Video. Delivered Fridays. Thanks for signing up! Check your inbox for a welcome email. Email required. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European users agree to the data transfer policy. For more newsletters, check out our newsletters page. The Latest. How a simple solution slashed child mortality in rural Kenyan villages By Dylan Matthews.
Why Biden has disappointed on immigration By German Lopez. Hating work is having a moment By Rani Molla. For most, July 17 is a pretty anti-climactic day. Unless you happen to claim this date as a birthday, in which case, woo! Cue the confetti and streamers. Unbeknownst to many, however, something did happen back in that affects a lot of us: The National Minimum Drinking Age Act was passed, establishing the legal drinking age at At the end of Prohibition in the s, the legal drinking age was
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