True North

Phyllis Kahn - a woman for whom the Strib normally carries the water in the most baldfaced possible way - has introduced a bill that would lower the drinking age to 18, again.

They are not amused:

If a 19-year-old can sign a contract and get married, shouldn’t she be able to legally sip champagne at her own wedding? And if an 18-year-old can be sent to war in Iraq or Afghanistan, why can’t he have a beer in a bar? Furthermore, teens will always find ways to drink — why not let them do it legally? A proposed bill at the Legislature this year poses these questions, but it provides the wrong answer.

And in response, the Strib provides even wrong-er responses.

But we’ll get to that. Kahn’s rationale - and it’s one of precious few times “rationale” has been used unironically in reference to Rep. Kahn - is that criminalizing drinking merely makes the behavior more pronounced. Underground drinking, already illegal, is more flagrant than measured, legal drinking.

Overwhelmingly, the evidence supports a drinking age of 21. Studies of the still-developing teenage brain show that adolescents are more vulnerable than adults to the effects of alcohol on learning, memory and judgment. And those who begin drinking in their early teens are at greater risk to become alcoholics.

Well, yeah. The “Teenage Brain” is more vulnerable to everything. It’s why we send teenagers, rather than thirty-somethings, to school. It’s why the military knocks itself out recruiting high school kids rather than married family guys.

Every stimulus meets a more intense response when you’re dealing with teenagers.

The question is, why single out drinking?

The Strib comes close to making a point…:

In addition, the lower age limit was tried before — and it didn’t work. Similar concerns were raised in the 1970s during the Vietnam War, prompting many states to lower the drinking age. But in the following decade younger drunken drivers became a bigger issue than war or the military service. As a result, Congress said it would pull federal funds from states that did not set 21 as the drinking age. By 1988, every state was in compliance.

But then…:

The results speak for themselves. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration reported that the number of drunken drivers under age 21 involved in fatal crashes decreased by 61 percent from 1982 to 1998. The agency also estimated that tens of thousands of lives were saved from 1975 to 2003 by higher age limits.

I don’t know exactly what studies they’re talking about - and it’s likely the Strib doesn’t either. The Strib Editorial Board tends to get its talking points from whatever pressure group has their ear at the moment; see their editorial on the “Stand Your Ground” bill.

But does the Strib think that drinking age laws operated in a vacuum? Laws about drunken driving in general got much stricter, especially against teenagers.

And five years ago, the Centers for Disease Control reviewed 49 studies on drinking age laws. Nearly all of them found that a 21-year-old drinking age saved lives.

As much as these people genuflect to Europe, you’d think they’d be a bit more cosmopolitan.

In most of Europe, drinking age laws (while more strict than they were a generation ago) are much lower than in the US, if they exist at all. And drunk driving rates are infinitesimal compared to the US.

Why?

Attitudes toward drinking are different, for starters; alcohol is a way of life in Europe, while in America it’s been regarded as a drug, a sin, contraband (by the Constitution, no less), a social problem. Scottish football hooligans notwithstanding, getting hammered and staggering around drunk doesn’t have quite the same cachet in Europe that it does among Americans, especially younger ones and Packer fans.

But laws about driving are much more strict in Europe. It takes serious time and effort - a year’s worth of classes, a lot of money, a hard test - to get a driver’s license in Europe. And part of that training involves learning the penalties for drunk driving - which are unambiguously severe.

So young Europeans drink. And yet they don’t drive drunk in anywhere near the numbers American teens did, and do.

Seeing a pattern here?

We admit that it seems inconsistent that young men and women who can be sent to war can be too young to drink legally. Yet that’s more an argument to raise the minimum age for military service than to lower the minimum age for drinking.

Well, no. It’s an argument to make driving more a privilege than a right; to put some teeth in driver education. There’s at least a fair argument that Minnesota’s new, more restrictive laws on teenage driving (they’re all on probation, in effect, until 18, with zero tolerance for screw-ups) have done at least as much to cut the death rate among young drivers as raising the drinking age did.

There’s nothing wrong with the fact that a kid can get a hunting license at age 12, drive at 16…

Actually, that example proves the opposite point.

Teenage hunters - like concealed carry permit holders - receive training that focuses intensely on the consequences of screwing up. And who causes the problems with hunting rifles and handguns in our state? Not teenage hunters (or carry permittees).

Forget the drinking age; it’s time to raise the driving age.

Cross-posted and comments welcome at Shot In The Dark.