TheAgitator.com
60 Minutes on Lowering the Drinking Age
Monday, March 9th, 2009The video below aired a couple of weeks ago, but it’s a pretty good look at the drinking age debate, with lots of camera time for Amethyst Initiative founder John McCardell.
(Note: If video isn’t working below, you can watch it here.)
One quibble: At one point in the segment, Lesley Stahl suggests that the “conundrum” for policymakers is that raising the drinking age has reduced alcohol-related traffic fatalities, but may be contributing to fatalities associated with underage binge drinking.
But there may not be a conundrum at all. When I interviewed McCardell for the February issue of Reason, he explained why the argument that raising the drinking age is responsible for the 20-year drop in highway deaths doesn’t hold water:
There has been a decline in traffic fatalities. But it began in 1982, two years before the law changed. It has basically been flat or inching upward for the last decade.
More interestingly, the decline has come in every age group, not just people between 18 and 21. And if you look at Canada, where the minimum drinking age is 18 or 19 [depending on the province], the trend in highway fatalities has almost exactly paralleled ours. It’s far more likely that the reduction in deaths is due to seat belt use, airbags, and safer cars.
Not to mention the enormously successful public awareness campaign Mothers Against Drunk Driving began in the early 1980s. MADD today has veered off into neoprohibition. But there’s no question their PR campaign changed attitudes about drunk driving.
great point about Canada’s drinking age being lower, but the death rate mirroring ours. That’s the beauty of New Hampshire not having seat belt laws- it shoots holes in the arguments to mandate seat belts.
hopefully, we’re starting to see reason take hold- drug prohibition is being discussed openly, drinking age laws are being debated… this is good stuff for freedom!
I agree on the dodgy stats that attribute a reduction in drunk driving fatalities to the drinking age laws. One of the problems with journalism is that, in a likely well-intended effort to provide “both sides” of the story, the evidence that each side presents is often given equal weight, even if one side’s “facts” are really unsubstantiated. (And, of course, there is also bias introduced by the bogus presumption that laws intended to fix a problem actually fix the problem. E.g., “The drinking age laws were intended to prevent drunk driving accidents, so let’s assume that they do…”)
Unfortunately, reporters do a mediocre job of thinking critically about the stats they are given and I sometimes wonder if part of it is because doing so would make the stories less compelling. I mean, if one side has a convincing argument that some policy is crap and the other side has basically nothing, then where’s the story?
I cringe anytime I see NHTSB stats on alcohol related deaths being touted in arguments. Their definition of “alcohol related” is sorely misleading.
However, I agree with Radley [the original] MADDs PR campaign in the 80s was the real reason for any reduction in DUI deaths. It had nothing to do with raising the drinking age to 21 or increased penalties for DUI.
There has been a “war on DUI” in this country for quite a while. But instead of admitting they’re winning, groups like MADD use fudged stats and propaganda to further their new cause: prohibition. If MADD’s sole focus was getting drunk drivers off the street, why would they give a rat’s ass about the drinking age?
OK. You have two kids and they are turning 14 and 15. Probably too late, but how to you address alcohol?
If you’re the state, you tell them they cannot drink and if they do you will have them arrested.
If you are actually sane, you follow McCardell’s advice and teach them pretty near everything you can about alcohol.
I realize it’s one point out of many, but the fact that “the decline has come in every age group, not just people between 18 and 21″ does not support McCardell’s point. A decrease in bad driving only by 18-21 year old drivers wouldn’t only help those drivers; it would help all the drivers and pedestrians into whom those young drivers might otherwise crash. A little old lady not getting run over does not prove that the drinking age failed.
driver’s licenses don’t prevent bad driving. Why do they think a drinking license will do any better?
Speaking of 60 minutes, did you see their two-segment report on the faulty nature of eye-witness testimony last night. It was easily the best report I’ve ever seen on that show.
Bottom line: If you’re old enough to (potentially) get drafted and die for your country, you should be able to do any damn thing you want to yourself.
And Roy, to your point, I defy you to find a SINGLE person between 18 and 21 who did not drive drunk because they said, “well, it’s against the law!” I never drive drunk for the same reason I don’t run red lights, and it’s not because I might get a ticket. I don’t do these things because they’re dangerous. How do I know they’re dangerous? Education.
After many college parties I went to, some people drove, and others didn’t. The ones that didn’t weren’t more law-abiding (they were drinking under 21, right? Not to mention other drugs that were being used.) They were just the ones who knew they were risking a crash if they did.
With all of the attacks from the Right about the MSM, and some of them valid, 60minutes seems to do a good job most of the time.
Including last nights episode and their expose on eye-witness testimony leading to false convictions.
Keep up the good work, 60minutes. And Balko, of course.
Cheers.
#8 Sean:
“I don’t do these things because they’re dangerous. How do I know they’re dangerous? Education.”
Very well said, Sean! We don’t need laws to tell us certain activities endanger ourselves and fellow citizens, just like we don’t need a “god” to tell us that we shant kill, steal, etc.. Some things are just kinda obvious if you have a modicum of common sense and some education.
But instead of admitting they’re winning, groups like MADD use fudged stats and propaganda to further their new cause: prohibition. If MADD’s sole focus was getting drunk drivers off the street, why would they give a rat’s ass about the drinking age?
Everything you ever wanted to know about MADD is here -
http://www.drunkard.com/issues/08_02/08_02_fighting_madd.htm
Highly recommended reading. You will learn its leaders have an interest in perpetuating the organization and their positions in it, and that’s all they actually care about, period. I call it the Institutional Imperative.
#11 Billy: Thanks. I’m fairly well versed on the neo-MADD but I hadn’t visited that site. These guys are pretty good at uncovering MADD’s bullshit.
http://www.ridl.us
Please don’t raise your minimum drinking age. In the UK where the minimum drinking age is 18, it is complete insanity on the streets every Friday, Saturday, and Wednesday night.
Apart from under-age drinkers, we also have a huge amount of spillover crime like violence for example from this. Obviously not all issues disappear between 18 and 21 but at least you seem to restrict yours to college instead of the entire country.
What we really need is less black and white laws that for example make drinking moderate amounts during a meal ok at a younger age while going out and getting “completely smashed” is heavily restricted.
21 is obviously completely arbitrary, and disallowing alcohol consumption exclusively by 18-20 year old *** ADULTS *** is probably (?) unconstitutional. The argument that the 21 drinking age reduces fatalities and is therefore justified is logically absurd. It suggests that we would then be justified in raising the drinking age to 90, because that would save even more lives omg!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Of course given that MADD’s thinly veiled agenda these days, as you mentioned, is prohibition, I guess it makes sense to them.
#13 Someone
“…for example make drinking moderate amounts during a meal ok at a younger age while going out and getting “completely smashed” is heavily restricted.”
Totally absurd bullshit nonsense. Just how the fuck do you propose to enforce that?
#13
I think, maybe, you mean “lower the minimum drinking age”, in relation to what you wrote. You seem to be referring to a law enforcement problem. But, I feel that, if you are old enough to die, fighting for your country, you should be old enough to drink!
#15,
Is, not, public intoxication used in many places, to arrest people? It seems to happen, in this little town, I live in, quite often. So if underage kids, or “adults” 18 or over, are publicly, in a drunken rage, they are, actually, breaking the law, already. If the locals don’t enforce the law, then, that is why they have some of their problems. I can bet the law enforcement also depends on whether you have a rich daddy, as well! So, I don’t see it as absurd. It is already on the books. Drunk in public, or breaking other laws, due to drunkenness, is already illegal in many places. Assault on someone is not legal, just because you are drunk! It’s matter of enforcing the laws.
lemme just add that Norway has had a similarly drastic reduction in traffic deaths the last 10-20 years, the drinking age in Norway is 18 and has to my knowledge been the same for far longer then the period in question.
im gonna hazard a guess that traffic death have generally declined in roughly the same way in all developed nations irrespective of their drinking legislation.
that definitely supports the idea that the reduction is due to improved cars and roads.
Drinking age should be kept to 21.
Young people are reckless and imagine them driving drunk?
You are old enough to die for your country you should be old enough to have a drink right? Well your dying to protect your country, how would lowering the drinking age help any?
Teens drink illegally but lowering the drinking age would just make it easier for them to get alcohol.
Why make it easier for them to get alcohol when there are enough problems with teen drinking as it is?
If we lower the drinking age, were ignoring the problem not solving it.