Lowering the Legal Drinking Age
Due to recent publicity about this issue, the Office of Drug Control Policy has issued this statement.
Please see the links below for addtional infomation on this topic.
IOWA VIEW: Lower Legal Drinking Age Not the Answer
8-26-08
I applaud recent attempts by some college and university presidents around the country to call attention to the problem of underage drinking on college campuses and elsewhere. However, the answer to this problem is not to lower the legal drinking age.
It is difficult to deny that the 21 year-old drinking age law is effective in reducing underage drinking and its many associated problems. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates more than 25,000 lives have been saved since the 21 year-old drinking age law became uniform among states in the 1980s. Additionally, in looking at more than 50 peer-reviewed studies of countries that lowered the legal drinking age to 18, the Centers for Disease Control found fatalities increased in those nations by 10 percent.
Not only would lowering the legal drinking age in the U.S. raise public safety concerns on the road, it would send a more permissive message to younger adolescents. That would be doubly dangerous.
According to the most recent Iowa Youth Survey, 32 percent of high school juniors—or almost one of every three 11th graders—report consuming five or more drinks of alcohol in a row on one or more days during the last month. On top of that, the Iowa Department of Public Health finds nearly 42 percent of Iowa juveniles screened or admitted to publicly funded substance abuse treatment programs in 2007 cited alcohol as their primary substance of abuse. That’s too many teenagers drinking alcohol in our communities, but it could be even worse.
Nationally, the Monitoring the Future survey shows that since the 21 year-old drinking age law went into effect, the number of high school seniors never using alcohol has increased from eight percent to 28 percent.
Delaying a young person’s first use of alcohol is an important public health strategy. Scientific research shows the human brain is not fully developed until the early to middle 20’s. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism says youth who begin drinking before the age of 15 are four times more likely to develop alcohol dependence as an adult than those who wait until age 21.
While not perfect, statistics demonstrate the 21 year-old legal drinking age should not be lowered. A lower legal drinking age is not the answer to this problem and lowering the legal drinking age will likely lead to higher rates of underage drinking and the social ills that go along with it. I call on anyone contemplating lowering the legal drinking age to read the research, and then to consider what message you want to send to the teenagers around you, including those in your own family.
Rather than debating whether to lower the legal drinking age, I urge all of the college presidents as well as the other members of our communities to discuss ways in which we might all make real changes in our communities, our ways of life and our ways of doing business that will actually make progress toward reducing underage drinking and the problems associated with it.
There is no single or easy answer to solving this problem. To make real improvement, we need parents to participate by talking to their kids and setting a good example. In addition to the parental involvement we need the rest of the community, including college campuses, to be engaged in these efforts as well. There are proven prevention strategies that will further reduce underage drinking and save lives – let’s spend our time and resources on implementing them on college campuses and elsewhere in our communities.
Sincerely,
Gary W. Kendell
Director
Scientific Reasons Why Lowering the Minimum Legal Drinking Age From 21 is a Bad Idea
Alcohol Fact Sheet - Department of Public Safety
Adolescent Brain Development & Drug Abuse
Preventative Interventions Addressing Underage Drinking
Statistical Analysis of Alcohol-Related Driving Trends 1982-2005
The Surgeon General's Call to Action to Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking