Growing up, learning about alcohol, and being exposed the media it is easy to discover that attitudes and laws about alcohol are not universal. Many countries have differing minimum drinking ages, while others prohibit it all together. When considering lowering our own drinking age, I thought it would be beneficial to take a look at the situation in countries that currently have lower minimum drinking ages.
The United States is one of very few countries that currently enforces a drinking age higher than twenty. The majority of the world uses age 18 as a limit. The map seen in the background of this blog and also posted to the right is a great summary of this. Several countries completely ban the substance; however, this is often for religious reasons. Surprisingly some countries have no age restriction at all.
Of course, just because the majority of the world is doing it, doesn’t mean we should. In some cases it’s better to be different from the norm. So the question is: Is the lower drinking age working for those countries? Many fear that a lower drinking age will increase the risk of alcoholism and car accidents. There is a large variety of data about many countries, so I have chosen a few to spotlight with a variety of age minimums. Below is a graph displaying the percentage of 15-year-olds who experienced drunkenness before the age of 13. It is divided up by country. These numbers don’t mean much until we consider the minimum drinking age in some of these countries.
We can quickly observe from this graph the wide varieties of numbers, even in nearby countries with similar drinking ages. England, with one of the highest rates of young drinking has its minimum age set at 18. Meanwhile, with the lowest incident of young drunkenness, Italy has no minimum drinking age (although you must be 16 to purchase alcohol). Some other ages from the countries shown above include: Ireland-18, Poland-16, USA-21, Spain-18, and Portugal-16. A full list of drinking ages can be found at http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/LegalDrinkingAge.html. So what does all this data mean? The data is very sporadic and does not reflect any pattern with respect to minimum age. This suggests that underage drinking is not intensified by a lower drinking age. In fact it is far more likely that underage drinking occurring as early as 13 is due to the cultural attitudes towards drinking in those countries. An article posted on the BBC News website discusses the attitudes toward alcohol in Europe. Italy showed a very low instance of young drinkers. It is common in Italy to drink at dinner, however getting drunk in public is seen as disrespectful and irresponsible. Spain similarly showed low numbers of youth drunkenness. The Spanish take part in slower social drinking; for example public places often sell smaller drinks. Contrastingly, according to the United Kingdom’s alcohol issues website, alcohol is too readily available. Drinking in England more often takes place in pubs, and there is little education on the daily guidelines for alcohol consumption.
These arguments are in no way definite, however, the numbers suggest that education as well as respect towards alcohol use are far more important factors in dangerous underage drinking than the minimum drinking age put in place by the government.
Of course, whenever someone mentions lowering the drinking age, everyone’s minds immediately jump to traffic safety. However, examination of the numbers in a few countries suggested that drinking age may not be as big of a factor as we thought. In the United Kingdom (drinking age 18) 17% of traffic fatalities were linked to alcohol-impaired conditions. Meanwhile Italy (age 16) showed 25% of deaths on the road were related to drunkenness. Here in the US, however, about 32% of traffic fatalities are accounted for due to alcohol-impaired conditions.
Finally, an increasing concern regarding global drinking age is study abroad students. It has become increasingly common for college age students to travel to another country for a few months to enhance their education. It can be difficult for these students to return to the United States and not be allowed to drink. On a personal note, I have some cousins who traveled internationally during their high school and college years. Upon returning, they found the “forbidden fruit” aspect of drinking in America all the more enticing.
So the question is, since a minimum age of 18 seems to be working for the rest of the world, why is our drinking age still 21? What makes us so different?
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I'm gonna play the devil's advocate here as someone studying health education (among many things) and argue against lowering the drinking age. If you look at binge drinking rates for those under the age of 21 the rates in other countries with lower drinking ages are nearly double those in the United States. Now not all binge drinking leads to accidents, but it is a risky behavior so I would assume that higher accident rates correlate with higher binge drinking rates, so it would be interesting to see research on comparing binge drinking related accidents by country. Another reason to keep the age at 21 is b/c the brain does not finish fully developing until the age of 25 and alcohol can negatively affect brain development. The prefrontal cortex which controls judgment and reasoning is the last area to develop so it is particularly risky for adolescents with out fully developed prefrontal cortex's to be drinking. There are interesting arguments for both side of this issue though. Nice work w/ the blog. Keep it up!
ReplyDeleteWhat you're not realizing is that of the few countries you listed that have little traffic fatality despite lowered drinking ages, none of them have the same transportation situation as the United States. Many European countries have much better public transportation systems than the United States does. Additionally, city planning in the United States often fails to make it easy for people to get where they need to go without owning a car. Thus, where European teens can easily take public transport home after a night of fun, American teens often don't have that same option.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, the penalty for driving while under the influence is much MUCH worse in some European countries in comparison to the United States, which makes drunk driving far less appealing.
Therefore it just isn't feasible to lower the drinking age when teens don't have proper access to public transportation and the consequences for driving drunk are not enough to make a lasting impact.
You know, I am not sure where I stand on all of this...but I do know that a foreign exchange student that we had at our school said that in many countries that have lower drinking ages than the US, being flat out drunk is shameful. Its not this "cool thing that all of the cool kids do with their cool friends" (there is a just a hint of sarcasm there). In my opinion, America's drinking age is not the problem. The problem is the image that society has created around drinking. Don't even get me started....
ReplyDeleteMegan, Thanks for reading! We appreciate all your comments!
ReplyDeleteIn regards to the binge drinking in other countries, research suggests that the binge drinking problem is closer related to each individual country's position on alcohol (or how they treat it) rather than the drinking age. Almost every country in the world has a lower drinking age than the US, but they do not all have higher binge drinking rates.
In regards to the issue of brain development, I would refer you to our post on the rights of 18-year-olds. http://18-and-up.blogspot.com/2011/03/affirmative-argument.html
Hey Margaret,
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for the feedback! I totally agree, the transportation system is very different here. However, there are more and more options of public transport becoming available. Also, many college campuses now have the option of a "drunk bus" available to discourage students from driving under the influence.
I also believe that along with changing the drinking age, it would be beneficial for our country to make its drunk driving policies more strict. Many countries have lower BAC requirements than we have here in the US.
Check out this site, it list the BAC in various countries:
http://www.driveandstayalive.com/articles%20and%20topics/drunk%20driving/artcl--drunk-driving-0005--global-BAC-limits.htm
wagne703,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the support! I completely agree. Attitudes and education regarding alcohol are far more important factors than drinking age!
Check out our other post of alcohol awareness!
http://18-and-up.blogspot.com/2011/03/informative-citation-alcohol-education.html
In response to the affirmative action argument, I'm going to argue that maybe the age to join the military should be higher than given that 18 yrs old do not have fully developed brains in the important area that controls reasoning and judgment. While fighting in the military can have negative psychological effects, it does not impair brain development like alcohol can. We do not want anyone's brain development to be impaired, especially people fighting in the military where sound reasoning and judgment can mean life or death at times.
ReplyDeleteI agree w/ the other posters that the US has a different attitude about drunkenness than other countries that probably adds to our drinking accidents and needs to be changed. I also like the point about US having different transportation systems than many European countries.