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Turning 18 marks the milestone of becoming an adult — you have the right to vote, get a tattoo, enlist, sue someone, run for state office or adopt a child. But you can’t drink alcohol.
Eighteen-year-olds are told to act like adults, yet they aren’t treated like adults. They face responsibilities such as applying for college and working a full-time job. At 18, they’re allowed to enlist in the military, but still resort to shot gunning beers and sharing sugary vodka in a friend of a friend’s basement, devouring as much alcohol as possible before the weekend is over — hoping to not get caught.
They can’t be expected to know how to be safe with alcohol when they’re spent our late teen years practicing unhealthy drinking habits. If young adults are taught earlier how to safely consume alcohol, they’ll be more likely to continue those healthier habits in adulthood.
According to PubMed Central (PMC), a growing amount of research concludes that the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) should remain 21. However, there are still many underaged drinkers engaging in unsafe alcohol consumption in the U.S. Lowering the MLDA from 21 to 18 could provide 18-20 year olds the chance to learn how to consume alcohol in a safe setting, while avoiding dangerous situations.
Most colleges are required to enforce the MLDA of 21, according to PMC. So, to avoid getting caught, college students end up drinking recklessly in unsupervised environments, only increasing the dangers of alcohol. Drinking in a bar is a lot safer than an abandoned parking lot.
It’s important to keep in mind that alcohol can be harmful to a teen’s health when consumed, especially irresponsibly. In retrospect, it’s more unhealthy for a teenager to develop a habit of binge drinking rather than be taught how to be responsible with alcohol, which could happen if they were exposed at an earlier age. The National Kidney Foundation states that binge drinking could cause acute or sudden kidney failure, and is overall more abrupt and harmful than the effects of regular responsible drinking habits.
Binge drinking — anytime a person’s blood alcohol concentration gets above 0.08 — shouldn’t be normalized, but it is still common because young adults in college were never taught or shown how to drink responsibly.
According to a study by the CDC from 2019, in the span of 30 days, 14% of high schoolers indulged in binge drinking and 5% drove after drinking. The study also found that 11% of people aged 12-20 binge drank as well.
A report called The True Effect of MLDA Reform by economist Dan Dirscherl concludes that lowering the MLDA to 18 would decrease the mortality rate of people aged 18-24 by 2.1%. Allowing kids to drink at a younger age would not only prevent binge drinking habits, but also decrease the number of alcohol-related injuries.
Dirscherl’s research also argues that raising the MLDA to 21 only delayed the mortality rate of 18-20 year olds due to alcohol-related deaths to when they are 21-22 year olds. This supports the experienced drinker hypothesis — the idea that keeping the MLDA at 21 allows people to gain confidence in their driving abilities at 16 years old, leading them to misjudge their abilities while drinking, resulting in drunk driving accidents.
Because the MLDAs in European countries are under 21, people often turn to their statistics to figure out what having a lower MLDA in the U.S. would look like. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addition recently released The European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs report from 2019 in which they discovered that there was a significant decrease in underaged alcohol consumption throughout European countries over the last 13 years.
There are many theories as to why the consumption percentage decreased such a considerable amount, one of which could be a cultural shift in the symbolic power of drinking for underaged drinkers. With this allure of illegal drinking gone, the “passage to adulthood” that drinking represents for underaged drinkers has lost meaning.
In these countries where the MLDA is 18, like Italy and France, this drop in underaged drinking suggests that our generation matured earlier, allowing those teens to be more responsible when it comes to drinking.
However, the same results cannot be said for the U.S. Chugging four Trulys in two hours because you “want to feel something” before your friend’s parents get home is not a safe drinking habit.
If the MLDA were lowered to 18, these age groups wouldn’t feel the pressure to participate in the same heavy rates of alcohol consumption that they do, and would treat it as a responsibility given to them.
Up until 18 years of age, teens are educated on many different aspects of adult life from our parents, school and life experiences. It’s no secret that teens are already consuming alcohol, so it’s time to promote a safe way to do so, through legal, supervised drinking starting at 18.
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