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Minimum Legal Drinking Age Analysis

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The article from Journal of Health Economics introduces the impact of minimum legal drinking age laws on alcohol consumption, smoking, and marijuana use. The abuse of alcohol is coming with healthy issue and some considerable spillover effects such as risky behavior, criminal activity, and alcohol related traffic injuries and fatalities. The regulation on alcohol availability in the lower the minimum legal drinking age from 21. The opponents of the MLDA of 21 argue that the age limit encourages young adults under age 21 to consume alcohol in an irresponsible manner and that lowering age would help young adults to learn how to drink gradually, safely. Many studies have investigated the effect of the MLDA law on alcohol consumption. However, …show more content…

And comparing outcomes across youths with similar income, educational levels, and other observed individual characteristic, but significant different levels of alcohol use. As the result, young adults just over 21 tend to increase their alcohol consumption more evenly by drinking on more days but consuming much less alcohol on drinking days, this effect is insignificant. The result indicates that the effect of MLDA on alcohol consumption among teens is not persistent in the long run. And after 21st birthday, the average number of drinks consumed per day starts to decrease immediately. The estimate also determines the relationship between alcohol consumption and smoking and marijuana use which complements the existing literature. According to the output, MLDA of age 21 to reduce drinking among young adults may have desirable impacts and can create public health …show more content…

Most of these studies have investigated of the changes in the MLDA that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s at the state level. However, there might be some selection biases the research faces, since states where a lower MLDA was imposed might be different in unobserved ways than those states where the MLDA of 21 was enforced. There are some unobserved characteristics that are correlated with drinking behavior such that state level alcohol consumption trends may also be associated with the MLDA law itself. If these unobserved biases at the state level are correlated with drinking behavior, then we cannot directly estimate a consistent effect of the MLDA on alcohol consumption by employing the simple changes of the MLDA law at the state level. The random discontinuity approach used in this paper alleviates this shortcoming by removing the bias from unobserved policy

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In the article “College Presidents Seek Debate on Drinking Age” the issue of lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18 is strongly discussed by college presidents and various organizations and Universities. Even though both parties agree that alcohol abuse in colleges is an extensive problem in schools around the country, college organizations are debating with lawmakers to lower the drinking age. With the intention to reduce driving accidents and deaths due to alcohol abuse, the drinking age was elevated to 21, creating the rejection of many college students and administrators in the country. Lowering the drinking age to 18 would not have much impact in the attitude of young people since there is no much difference in maturity in 3 years. This statement is supported by a Duke University sophomore from Singapore, where the drinking age is lower.

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When the government decided to lower their drinking age from 20 to 18 years old in 1999, they correctly predicted that there would not be an increase in alcohol abuse because many teenagers already drank alcohol they obtained illegally from adults (ICAP, 2002.) This supports the philosophy that it is better and healthier to allow young people to drink at a lower age so that their habits can be controlled, and that this can be done without increasing dangerous behavior. Statistics from around the world also suggest that a decreased legal drinking age creates healthier drinkers in the long run. A study on the percentage of people older than 15 years old with an alcohol use disorder reveals that 5.48% of Americans are affected, compared to 1.07% of people in Spain and 0.5% of people in Italy (WHO, 2004). Analyzing this data shows that the rate of alcoholism is significantly lower in countries including Spain and Italy where the drinking age is lower, likely because citizens drink responsibly throughout their entire lives.

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1064 Words | 5 Pages

According to the chart, most of the drinking is being done by teens. The chart depicts that only a small amount of youths wait until they are legal to start drinking. Lowering MLDA will encourage and increase the amount of drinking among young teens. It will also lead to an increase in risky behavior which will have dire consequences for youth. “Letting younger people drink is giving immature citizens more of the ability to make bad decisions that not only affect themselves but can also be very harmful to others”.

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603 Words | 3 Pages

However, “90% of drunk driving deaths in the United States were found in the over 21 age group” (Gruenewald). For this reason, drunk driving is not directly correlated with the drinking age. In addition, the percent of drunk driving deaths in the United States has reduced at a slower rate than European countries where they have their legal drinking age at eighteen. This suggest that if lowering the drinking age was a success in Europe, it may also be effective here in the United States to diminish the amount of drunk driving deaths. This is because people that become injured due to alcohol or alcohol poisoning are afraid to report their injuries to the hospital or authorities out of fear of illegal consequences for underage drinking.

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1599 Words | 7 Pages

"In general, the younger people start to drink the safer they are," said Heath, who has written several books and hundreds of scholarly articles on cultural attitudes towards alcohol. When introduced early, he said, "Alcohol has no mystique. It's no big deal. By contrast, where it's banned until age 21, there's something of the 'forbidden fruit' syndrome." and if the United States has learned anything from not letting people drink it is that it does not last very long and that the citizens always find a way around the system and break the laws like how gas stations still sell alcohol to minors just like most gas stations sell cigarettes, cigars, cigarillos, dip, chaw, chew, chewing tobacco, vapor cigarettes, hookah, hookah pens.

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978 Words | 4 Pages

But while it has succeeded in that, it is also believed that tougher rules, such as DUI rules and seatbelt safety rules have also played a part in this decrease. However, this higher drinking age hasn’t reduced drinking, its only “driven it underground,” Gabrielle Glaser states in her NY Times article. It has been driven underground to the riskiest settings, high school parties and frat parties that are unsupervised. This age raise segregates the drinking away from adults that can model moderation in drinking. If an 18-year-old high school senior is shown by his/her parent(s) how to drink responsibly and in moderation, I believe that it would greatly help in reducing the chance of making bad decisions by overdoing it, such as driving while drinking.

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733 Words | 3 Pages

The current alcohol laws both statewide and nationwide, prove unsuccessful and a more efficient way to handle the situation is to educate teens about alcohol to influence them to make wise

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1155 Words | 5 Pages

Teenagers have been purchasing alcohol with fake ID cards, getting into bars and clubs, and drinking liquor illegally for years. Lowering the minimum legal drinking age to 18 would be a helpful and effective step in stopping binge drinking and encouraging the enjoyable act of consuming alcohol, reducing traffic accidents, and allowing those in the 18-to-20 year old age

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833 Words | 4 Pages

“In 2015, 2,333 teens in the United States ages 16–19 were killed while under the influence and 221,313 were treated in emergency departments for injuries suffered in motor vehicle crashes in 2014” (“Motor Vehicle Safety”). This statistic brought up the real debate of should the legal drinking age remain 21. To some people the legal drinking age should remain 21, and that its the smart thing to do for our society. On the other hand some people think that the drinking age should be lowered to 18 because people think that once you turn 18 your mature enough to start drinking. The drinking age should remain at the age of 21.

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769 Words | 4 Pages

Alcohol abuse and alcoholism seems like an issue that keeps getting increasingly worse each year in the United States. According to USA Today and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention both say that approximately 6 people die from alcohol poisoning, caused from binge drinking, each day, which amounts to roughly 2,200 people each year. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism says that “In 2013 an estimated 697,000 adolescents ages 12–17 (2.8 percent of this age group) had an [alcohol use disorder]” (“Alcohol Facts”). Something has to stop and something has to change from preventing this more because 6 people dying each day from binge drinking alone is a lot, not to mention that 12-17 year olds are having alcohol problems at such a young age. Lowering the drinking age will enforce this act even more, promoting more drinking in fact.

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1278 Words | 6 Pages

To address this drinking age should not be lowered to 19. Many people in families think that drinking can harm their life. It’s people jobs to take care of your health and live a happy life with families and friends. Many parents take care of their children and evidence is that an average family spent $24,164 for paying for college and kids don’t know that. People of this world it is more important that you can be more efficient that you can be of not drinking.

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785 Words | 4 Pages

One proposed solution to this problem is lowering the minimum legal drinking age(MLDA) to 18 years old. To many, this may seem like a counterintuitive idea but, research has shown that it might just work. In fact, lowering the drinking age might actually lead to less drinking among 18-20 year olds as they would be drinking in establishments such as bars and restaurants instead of in fraternity houses and at college parties, where binge drinking is more likely to occur. When drinking has to be hidden there is a greater incentive to drink as much as possible because it might be weeks before the next big party, but when drinking is something that can be done whenever one pleases just by going to a restaurant, it is much more likely that college

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827 Words | 4 Pages

In some countries, like in Europe the drinking age is set at 18. Even though people in the US think this is insane, this set age has more positive effects than people think it would. It is known that binge drinking is a problem in the US since it has the highest rate in the world for binge drinking. In Europe, teenagers get their license at age 18, and some drinking ages are lower than that, they figure out how to control their drinking before the drive. Unlike in the US, kids drink and then drive because they either have to be home by curfew or they are too scared to call their parents for a ride, and admit they had been under the

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1693 Words | 7 Pages

A poll taken on July 2014 asked the public opinion of US adults for lowering the US legal drinking age from 21 to 18. Approximately 74% of the people opposed the idea, whereas roughly 25% of the people supported the idea ("Public Opinion" 1). The statistics indicate satisfaction among the majority of the people; however, with the current laws many issues arise that must be addressed concerning alcohol use. For starters, studies show an increase of dangerous drinking habits among young adults (Hall 2). In addition, the enforcement of the drinking laws and education on alcohol is insubstantial (Moyse, Fonder 3).

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903 Words | 4 Pages

In fact, the law may increase the amount of eighteen to twenty year olds who do drink. It has been shown that, especially in college-age students, there is a tendency to not do what they are told, on the contrary, they will do the exact opposite. The problem with the drinking age being twenty-one is that some students drink purely out of defiance). The number of fatalities is down in all age groups, not just teenagers, and cars driven now are much safer than the cars that were being driven in the early 1980’s, and teenagers are much safer drivers, which can be attributed to the decreased amount of fatalities. Also, in other countries that have lower drinking ages, the number of fatalities has

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