Drinking Age

Ever wonder what the drinking age should be?
Mackenzie Gandy explores two alternatives to the drinking age debate. 

Drinking Age

There are two major conflicting schools of thought in alcohol policy. One focuses primarily on reducing alcohol consumption rates throughout the population, which is the “dry” group. This group includes most American advocates like the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse and the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth. The “dry group pushes for measures like high alcohol taxes, restrictions on advertising and selling times and high drinking ages. They tend to favor most measures that restrict access to alcohol-up to and including absolute prohibition in some cases, though this will not be feasible anytime soon. 


The second group, the “wets” that are advocates for safe drinking, claim that these kinds of “prohibitionist” measures actually increase damage by, driving young drinkers underground where they are more likely to drink dangerously. 


They support efforts like lowering the drinking age in order to allow young people to learn to drink moderately. They believe such measures would encourage youth to seek help if they do get in trouble. “Wets” include groups like the Drug Policy Alliance and experts like author Stanton Peele. 


There is some evidence to support both perspectives: Those who believe in lowering overall consumption cite studies linking higher alcohol taxes and a higher drinking age with fewer drunken driving deaths, lower crime rates and even lower rates of sexually-transmitted disease.