Does a Minimum Drinking Age Make Sense?

Laws that specify minimum ages are driven more by the practicality of administering the law and political pressures than they are by physiological development or rational judgment.  For example, the lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18 in 1971 (the 26th Amendment to the Constitution) was a result of political pressure related to the military draft (the argument was that if one was old enough to be drafted and die for their country, then they were old enough to have the right to vote and have a voice in policies that affected their future).  On the other hand, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act led states in 1984 to raise the legal drinking age in response to increasing alcohol related death toll. While with a good intent, raising the drinking age did not actually reduce alcohol related deaths committed by drivers under 21; it merely served to criminalize behavior, and arguably lead to greater binge drinking. Laws did not take account of the young developing brain; they were mindless responses to behavioral abuses by a few people, fueled by societal and political pressure. Psychological development and maturity of judgment were not even factors in those policy debates at the time.

Laws should take into account the young developing brain.  But practically, it is difficult and possibly unethical to clearly determine what is considered “old enough” and then enforce the laws. It is challenging to reliably test for psychological development and maturity of judgment, although academic success is widely observed as a reliable source. The key question is not whether all rights should align with the same minimum age – which they probably shouldn’t – but whether the right or policy should be able to vary based on more than just chronological age. Age does not imply good judgment; experience and knowledge do, and the rate at which one assimilates those varies widely.

Societal pressures for democratic application of laws have always led the Government to implement age-based laws and policies without looking to individual capacity, mental awareness, and judgmental maturity.  It is easy to enforce age limits and hard to carry out a more individualized model in which privileges and rights reflect that judgment and maturity have more a role than age.  The current age-based approach is a broad, easy solution to a complex problem, but the alternative is likely to be hard to enforce and could seem quite arbitrary. Given Government’s responsibility for doing what’s fair it is difficult to see the assessment of psychological development trumping the age-based standard. I support the current approach because despite its flaws, it is rooted in simple, clear, definite rules that are easy to understand and easy to enforce.