Movement to lower drinking age in seven states

There is now a movement growing in several states to lower the legal drinking age from 21 to 18 years of age.

State pols in Kentucky, Wisconsin and South Carolina have introduced legislation that would lower the drinking age only for military personnel, while Missouri, South Dakota, Vermont and Minnesota are considering more expansive measures that would lower the drinking age for the general population.

This article does a poor job presenting research from both sides of issue:

According to the National Institutes of Health, alcohol-related traffic deaths have decreased across the board with the greatest proportional declines among people 16 to 20 years old.

And those traffic deaths were declining long before the legal drinking age was raised to 21, and have leveled off since the early 1990's as shown by this chart.

This decline also follows the proliferation of mandatory seat belt laws and required supplementary restraint systems in newly manufactured cars. To argue that this decline was due solely, or even primarily, to the raised drinking age is to conflate correlation with causation and is incredibly naive.

One thing that needs to be pointed out is that there is no federal drinking age in the United States. Under Amendment XXI of the Constitution, that authority rests with the individual states. However the federal government essentially forced states to raise their drinking ages by withholding federal highway funds. Blame Elizabeth Dole.

I think it is clear where I stand on this issue. If not just go and read what this guy has to say and know that I agree with him.

As if there weren't enough links in this post, you can watch a mini-debate between Glynn Birch (President of MADD) and John McCardell (Director of Choose Responsibility) below.