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By Don Heinzman
There are bills in the Minnesota Legislature to lower the drinking age to 18.
As Minnesota wrestles with the problem of teen drunken driving deaths, binge drinking and an increase in high school student drinking, it makes little sense to make legal drinking easier and earlier.
Throughout the country, states are taking a second look at lowering the age, figuring if United States military volunteers can fight and die at 18, they ought to be able to have a drink in a bar.
In South Dakota, a petition is circulatingn that would allow 19 and 20-year-olds to buy beer no stronger than 3.2 percent alcohol. In Wisconsin, an effort is under way that would allow active duty military personnel younger than 21 to buy alcohol.
It is clear, however, that a national effort would be opposed by American parents and major lobbying groups.
No ground swell exists in Minnesota for lowering the legal drinking age. Under a federal law, Minnesota could lose 10 percent of its federal highway money if the age were lowered.
Since 1984, the bar for drinking legally has been established at 21 years and there’s evidence that raising the age has saved lives on the highways.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that minimum-drinking laws have saved 18,220 lives, 861 in 1998 alone. The same report says that increasing the age has produced a 13 percent decrease in traffic accidents.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving is opposed to lowering the drinking age, saying that highway drunken driving fatalities have declined precipitously since the drinking age was raised. MAAD also says that after 29 states lowered the drinking age in the 1970s, all of them saw drunken driving highway deaths spike.
Another argument against lowering the drinking age is that 18-year-olds are not as responsible as 21-year-olds when drinking and particularly driving. Younger drivers tend to believe that they are invincible, that they can hold their liquor and they are ignorant of how much drinking can impair their judgment while driving.
Teenage boys with a blood alcohol level of .05 to .10 are 18 times more likely to suffer a single vehicle crash, and teenage girls at the same levels are 54 more times likely to have a crash.
Still, advocates of lowering the drinking age contend if servicemen and women can fight in Iraq and Afghanistan they should be able to drink at 18 years of age.
A group called Missouri 18 to Drink said as of the start of this year, 650 service members who have died in the war were under the age of 21.
Evidence is on the side of keeping the legal drinking age at 21, the age where drinking liquor can be done more responsibly and safely.
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