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Nearly every country in the world has a minimum drinking age. Throughout Europe, anyone aged 18 or older can drink any type of alcoholic beverage they choose, and many countries have even lower legal drinking ages—France and Italy have a minimum age of 16, Switzerland allows 14-year-olds to drink beer and wine but not hard liquor, and Poland has no minimum drinking age at all.

The U.S., by contrast, has one of the world's highest minimum drinking ages. In every U.S. state as well as in Washington, D.C., it is illegal for anyone under the age of 21 to possess alcoholic beverages of any kind. Although there are some exceptions to that rule in certain states, the U.S.'s minimum drinking age is strictly enforced.

For much of the 20th century, however, minimum-drinking-age laws varied from state to state. In many places, it was legal for people as young as 18 to purchase and drink alcohol. The introduction of a constitutional amendment lowering the U.S.'s voting age to 18 in 1971 ushered in a further wave of lowered drinking ages in many states.

However, that tide was swiftly reversed beginning in the late 1970s. Many states that had lowered their drinking ages re-raised them, partially in response to a growing public outcry over an outbreak of drunk-driving fatalities. In an effort to cut down on drunk driving on a national level, a federal law was passed in 1984 that effectively established a national minimum drinking age of 21. That law drew its share of controversy at the time of its passage, however, and continues to be criticized by those who argue that a 21-and-older drinking limit is poorly reasoned social policy.

Is the current minimum drinking age of 21 a good idea, promoting safety and responsibility among American teenagers? Or has it backfired, causing an increasingly dangerous drinking culture among U.S. youth?

Supporters of the current minimum drinking age say that the higher age limit has reduced drunk driving deaths substantially, and generally makes for a safer environment. Teenagers and alcohol make for a potentially hazardous mix, supporters maintain, and any steps taken to separate those two elements should be welcomed. Additionally, the human body does not fully develop until around the age of 21, proponents say; the intake of alcohol can cause grave mental and physical damage to a still-developing body.

Critics, however, argue that the 21-and-over drinking laws have actually made for a more dangerous environment for American teenagers by prompting them to do their drinking in private, unsupervised environments. Those environments have created an irresponsible, drink-to-get-drunk youth culture in the U.S., they say—a sharp contrast to the more responsible youth drinkers in Europe and other parts of the world.

In 1919, the growing prohibitionist movement in the U.S., which argued that consumption of alcohol was sinful and had negative effects on the American family, finally achieved its most ambitious goal. That year, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, which outlawed the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcoholic beverages in the U.S., was ratified. Although the amendment was intended to increase social well-being, alcohol came to be distilled illegally by bootleggers and gangsters. The black market thrived during the Prohibition era, and organized crime became a big problem in many U.S. cities.

Finally, after nearly 14 years, Prohibition officially ended with the ratification of the 21st Amendment in December 1933. During the years following Prohibition, individual states determined their own minimum drinking ages, with the majority opting for a 21-and-older age limit on purchasing and consuming alcoholic beverages. Others established minimum drinking ages as low as 18.

In July 1971, President Richard Nixon (R, 1969-74) formally certified the 26th Amendment to the Constitution, which gave all U.S. citizens over the age of 18 the right to vote. Prior to that amendment, most states had imposed a minimum voting age of 21. The lowered voting age was very much the product of the U.S.'s involvement in the Vietnam War, the opposition to which was reaching a crescendo in 1971, historians say. Many lawmakers argued that if an 18-year-old was eligible to be drafted into military service and sent overseas to fight for the U.S., he should also be able to help decide the leadership of his country through the electoral process.

Following the certification of the 26th Amendment, many states began to lower their minimum ages for other legal rights, including the right to marry and to sign a contract without the approval of a parent or legal guardian. Minimum drinking ages were similarly lowered in many states. Between 1970 and 1975, 29 states lowered their drinking ages to 18, 19 or 20, according to the American Medical Association. Other states simply altered their laws. In Wisconsin, for instance, 18-year-olds gained the right to purchase and consume hard liquor; previously, they could legally drink only beer and wine.

By the mid-1970s, however, the trend of states lowering their minimum drinking age had been reversed. From September 1976 to January 1983, a total of 16 states increased their drinking ages. Experts say that many factors contributed to that shift. A spate of drunk-driving deaths alarmed the U.S. public, for example, causing many state lawmakers to react by raising minimum drinking ages.

Additionally, concern over so-called blood borders caused a public outcry for a uniform drinking age, experts say. Blood borders existed between states with different minimum drinking ages—young people living in a state with a high drinking age would cross the border into a state with a lower age limit, go drinking, then drive back home. The high rate of alcohol-related accidents along the border between the two states gave rise to the "blood border" label. For example, before New Jersey raised its drinking age to 21 in 1983, a blood border had existed between it and Pennsylvania, where the 21-and-over drinking age was already established. In cities like Philadelphia, Pa., 19- and 20-year-olds would make the short trip across the Delaware River to New Jersey to drink.

After the national minimum drinking age was established in the mid-1980s, lawmakers pushed to enact "zero tolerance" laws against underage drunk drivers. By the late 1990s, all 50 states plus Washington, D.C., had passed zero tolerance laws, which stated that any driver under the age of 21 who had a blood alcohol content (BAC) level of 0.02 or lower could have their driver's license immediately suspended. In some states, the maximum BAC of an underage driver is 0.00. That means that even a trace of alcohol—a mouthful of a typical brand of beer, for example—is forbidden.

The zero-tolerance underage drunk driving laws are an example of how firmly entrenched in U.S. society the 21-and-older national drinking age has become. But some politicians have spoken out against the minimum drinking age. One of them is Felix Ortiz (D), a state assemblyman representing the 51st district of New York State. In 2002, Ortiz introduced a bill that would have lowered the state's drinking age to 18. Because it would have violated the terms of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, New York State stood to lose approximately $150 million in highway funding. The bill died in committee.

Another, more prominent political figure who has voiced his support for lowering the national drinking age is Peter Coors, the chief executive officer of the Golden, Colo.-based Coors Brewing Co. In 2004, Coors took a leave of absence from his position as the head of that company to run for the U.S. Senate in Colorado as a Republican.

Coors had broached the subject of lowering the drinking age long before the race began, in a 1997 interview he gave USA Today. "Maybe the answer is lowering the drinking age so that kids learn to be responsible about drinking at a younger age," Coors told USA Today. "I'm not an advocate of trying to get people to drink, but kids are drinking now anyway. All we've done is criminalize them."

After the race began, he reiterated those sentiments during a June 2004 debate. "We got along fine for years with the 18-year-old drinking age," Coors said. "We're criminalizing our young people." In November, Coors was defeated by his Democratic opponent, Ken Salazar, 51% to 47%.

Legislation that would lower the drinking age has been introduced in several other states. In Vermont, for instance, state Rep. Richard Marron (R) introduced a bill to lower that state's legal drinking age to 18; at least 17 fellow lawmakers co-sponsored the bill.

Marron said he was inspired to lower the drinking age after reading an editorial written by John McCardell Jr., published in the New York Times in September 2004. McCardell, a former president of Middlebury College in Vermont, wrote that "the 21-year-old drinking age is bad social policy and terrible law. Colleges should be given the chance to educate students, who in all other respects are adults, in the appropriate use of alcohol, within campus boundaries and out in the open." As of May 2006, the bill remained in limbo.

Meanwhile, a bill proposed by Wisconsin state Rep. Mark Pettis (R) is similarly stalled in the state bureaucracy. Pettis's bill, introduced in May 2005, would create an exemption to Wisconsin's 21-and-older drinking age. Under the terms of the proposed law, 19- and 20-year-old military members would be permitted to consume alcoholic beverages in bars and restaurants.

In justifying the bill, Pettis argued that the men and women who serve the U.S. in the military should be able to legally drink a beer or two if they choose. "If you are old enough to push the button on nuclear action, you should be old enough to have a Miller Lite," Pettis says. Pettis's bill is conditional on the federal government waiving its pledge to reduce the state's highway funds for violating the National Minimum Drinking Age Act. A similar drinking-age exception for members of the armed forces was voted down by the House Judiciary Committee of New Hampshire in January 2006.

Those who argue that the national drinking age should be kept at 21 point to various statistics that they say prove that the raised age limit has worked, particularly when it comes to eliminating underage drunk driving. "One of the biggest advantages of the 21-year-old drinking age is that it's significantly harder for kids [under 21] to find alcohol and then to drive," says Scott Falb, a driving safety specialist with the Iowa Department of Transportation.

Across the country, alcohol-related car crashes among drivers aged 16 to 20 declined by 61% from 1982 to 1998, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA). Additionally, the NHTSA estimates that more than 23,000 alcohol-related vehicular deaths in the U.S. have been prevented since 1975, the year many states began raising their drinking ages.

Supporters of the current drinking age say there are many more ways in which the National Minimum Drinking Age Act has been a success. It has prevented scores of negative alcohol-related incidents in addition to car crashes, such as fights, alcohol overdoses and other types of accidents, they say, many of which never get reported and therefore are not reliably tracked.

"What most people don't understand is that drunken driving numbers are just the most measurable results that we have," says Diane Riibe of Project Extra Mile, a Nebraska-based coalition committed to reducing underage drinking in that state. "There are other alcohol-related accidents that we don't always have a direct way of measuring: drownings, falls off balconies at fraternity parties, alcohol poisoning. All of these have been reduced by the minimum age."

Another reason why the current minimum drinking age is a good idea has to do with the way the human body develops both mentally and physically, defenders assert. Groups such as MADD say that there is scientific evidence that the brain does not fully mature until a person reaches the age of 21, on average. Excessive alcohol consumption before that age can lead to permanent brain damage, negatively affecting a person's memory, motor skills and test-taking ability for the rest of their lives, they say. Additionally, supporters cite research showing that because many teenagers' bodies are not fully developed until they reach their late teens or early twenties, excessive alcohol use could severely damage their more-sensitive livers.

Advocates also warn against the potential trickle-down effects of reducing the minimum drinking age to 18 or lower. Because many 18-year-olds are still in high school, a drinking age of 18 would allow legal-aged students to purchase alcohol for many younger classmates, some of them as young as 14 years old, defenders argue. Referring to the scientific research, supporters of the current drinking age say that lowering it to 18 could have disastrous effects on the health of scores of young people in the U.S.

One of the most positive effects of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, supporters contend, is that it has helped to reduce what they call the "drinking culture" previously prevalent among American youth. Because it is more difficult to obtain, alcohol plays a smaller role in the lives of American high-school and college students, defenders maintain. Perhaps emboldened by the under-21 drinking ban, defenders argue, more teenagers are willing to abstain from drinking.

Defenders also point to the declining teenage pregnancy rates in the U.S. as another positive side effect of the raised minimum drinking age. Underage alcohol consumption can sometimes lead to minors engaging in unprotected sex, which in turn causes high teen pregnancy rates, experts say. However, since 1990, teenage pregnancy has declined steadily and significantly; reduced access to alcohol among those under 21 likely has a lot to do with that, defenders maintain.

Many supporters also point to other countries, the vast majority of which have minimum drinking ages lower than 21. According to supporters, those lower drinking ages have not worked out so well in many cases. "Compared to American youth, binge drinking rates among young people are higher in every European country except Turkey," writes Robert Voas, a senior researcher at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, a nonprofit research center with a focus on drugs and alcohol. "Intoxication rates are higher in most countries; inBritain, Denmark and Ireland they're more than twice the U.S. level," Voas continues. High intoxication and binge drinking rates are closely linked to high drunk driving rates, Voas writes.

Critics of the current minimum drinking age argue that the law has actually made the youth drinking culture less safe by encouraging irresponsible drinking habits among those under legal age. Realistically, they argue, teenagers are going to drink alcohol no matter what. A 2004 survey by the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor found that 71% of high school seniors had consumed alcohol within the last year, while 94% reported that it was "fairly easy" or "very easy" for them to obtain alcohol.

Because it is illegal to purchase and drink alcohol, teenagers often resort to doing their drinking in unsafe environments, far outside the public eye, critics note. "Instead of [drinking] in a controlled situation, going to a bar with a drink limit or something, they're doing it at keg parties in places that are harder to control," says Alex Koroknay-Palicz, the executive director of the National Youth Rights Association, a civil-rights advocacy group.

Additionally, because teenagers are afraid to get caught drinking, many wind up drinking large amounts of alcohol in short periods of time, which quickly leads to dangerous levels of intoxication, critics say. Before the legal drinking age was raised in the mid-1980s, opponents say, teenage drunkenness was a definite problem, but the extreme binge-drinking culture so common among people under 21 today was not present.

Opponents of the current drinking age also posit what is commonly referred to as the "forbidden fruit" theory. By making alcohol legally unattainable for those under 21, lawmakers have inadvertently romanticized it, causing teenagers to want to drink even more, critics maintain. "[G]iving liquor the status of contraband seems to have invested it with a mystique, rendering its use—and abuse—chic and even de rigueur, especially in fraternity and sorority life," write Michael Clay Smith and Margaret Smith, professors of criminal justice and educational leadership, respectively.

Another common argument against the 21-and-older drinking age is that, in the U.S., 18-year-olds are treated like adults in almost every other way. Yet they are not allowed to purchase alcohol, which is blatantly hypocritical, opponents contend. "Philosophically, it's difficult to reconcile the notion that you can enlist in the military, serve your country, go to war, but not go into your local pub and get a draft beer," says Jason Gibbs, a spokesman for Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas (R).

Many critics also accuse those who support the current drinking age of using misleading statistics and other information in their campaign against teenage drinking. For example, many of the same studies that show a decrease in alcohol-related car accidents among 16- to 20-year-olds also show a dramatic increase in such accidents among 21- to 24-year olds. Critics say that shows that the increased minimum drinking age does not address the problem of drunk driving in any real way—it simply shifts drunk driving deaths into a slightly older age bracket.

Additionally, many of the scientific experiments that suggest that alcohol adversely affects the physical and mental development of teenagers rely on findings that are taken out of context, critics contend. One or two episodes of excessive alcohol intake will likely not cause permanent brain damage in teenagers, opponents say. Those experiments refer more to the effects of long-term alcohol abuse—in levels that effectively amount to full-blown alcoholism—on the brains and bodies of teenagers, they assert.

Nearly every other country in the world has a minimum drinking age of 18, and yet alcoholism is not a global epidemic, critics say. Many opponents of the U.S.'s current drinking laws point to minimum drinking ages in Europe, which range from 14 to 18, with some countries having no minimum drinking age at all. Yet Europe's drinking culture preaches moderate, responsible alcohol intake, according to David Hanson, a sociology professor emeritus from the State University of New York at Potsdam.

In contrast to their American peers, Europeans are "very intolerant of their peers who become intoxicated," Hanson says. "They think it's stupid, unacceptable, and that's true throughout most of Europe." Many critics attribute that to Europe's lower drinking ages, which they say helps cultivate a responsible drinking culture by allowing teenagers to ease into drinking at their own pace.

Additionally, the over-21 drinking laws have criminalized vast numbers of people for relatively minor crimes, leaving "otherwise promising students with police records," write Margaret and Michael Clay Smith. "[S]tudents over 21 who, as commonly happens, party with friends a few years younger get rap sheets for giving alcohol to minors," they continue. Having such an offense on one's record seriously complicates activities like looking for jobs and applying to graduate school, they continue.

Finally, some opponents of the U.S.'s minimum drinking age have argued that the law that brought it into existence—the National Minimum Drinking Age Act—might be unconstitutional. The decision to establish a minimum drinking age should rest with individual states, they maintain. But by threatening to withhold highway funds, they say, the federal government coerced a number of states into raising their drinking ages to 21. The 1984 act "was, in effect, a federal mandate forced on the states with little or no input from them," writes the Tampa Tribune's Joseph Brown.

The debate over whether the U.S. should lower its drinking age is likely to continue indefinitely. Interestingly, it is a debate in which the two sides cannot easily be ideologically defined. Many conservatives argue that the National Minimum Drinking Age Act is flawed because it takes power out of the hands of state legislators and gives it to the federal government; however, many other conservatives say that the law has helped protect generations of American youth from alcohol's dangers. Liberals, meanwhile, are similarly split, with many arguing in favor of the law and seemingly just as many maintaining that it unnecessarily criminalizes what can be a relatively benign activity.

The minimum drinking age debate seems to ultimately pivot on one issue: drunk driving. On the one hand, in 1984, then-Rep. Barbara Boxer (D, Calif.) argued for the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, saying it would cut down on drunk drivers, who "are really murderers waiting in the wings." More than 20 years later, groups such as MADD continue to campaign for even tougher U.S. drinking laws and to conduct studies to bolster their case for keeping the minimum drinking age at 21.

Meanwhile, opponents of the 21-and-over drinking law produce their own statistics, including studies showing that the raised drinking age merely delays an uptick in drunk-driving deaths by a few years. Critics of the current national minimum drinking age say they hope the legislation currently pending in Vermont and Wisconsin—if it ever passes—could begin a trend that would ultimately return the right to determine drinking ages to individual states.

Bibliography

Belluck, Pam. "Vermont Considers Lowering Drinking Age to 18." New York Times, April 13, 2005, A13.

Brown, Joseph. "Feds Demand Under-21 Prohibition." Tampa Tribune, June 10, 2001, 6.

Couch, Mark. "Drinking-Age Query Keeps Bubbling Up." Denver Post, October 29, 2004, A1.