My son and I are in the process of planning a trip to Germany next year. I want to take him so I can show him where I was stationed, where I pulled border duty at OP Alpha, now a museum. In the planning process, two questions came up. The first was whether he could drive in Germany as he would have his U.S. driver's license by then. The answer to that question was no, he would need to be
18 years old to drive in Germany. He then asked what the drinking age was in
Germany.
- At 14 - minors are allowed to consume and possess undistilled (fermented) alcoholic beverages, such as beer and wine, as long as they are in the company by a Custodial Person. (§ 9 JuSchG (2) Sub-Clause 1, No. 2)
- At 16 - minors are allowed to consume and possess undistilled (fermented) alcoholic beverages, such as beer and wine without their parents or a legal guardian. (§ 9 JuSchG (1) 2.)
- At 18 - having become adults, people are allowed access to distilled spirits, beverages containing distilled spirits, and food products containing non-negligible amounts of distilled spirits. (§ 9 JuSchG (1) 1.)
He was surprised that he could drink legally in Germany before he could drive. I have often wondered if we have approached the drinking age in the United States the wrong way. We are constantly bombarded with ads about drinking, always with the fine print that says, "Enjoy in moderation." The ads are aimed at the youth of America—just look at the Bud Light "Up for Whatever" campaign below and you can see that it is not aimed at the over-40 crowd.
In the United States, at 18 you can join the Army, sign a contract, rent an apartment, get married, and undertake numerous other fun activities like pay bills. But the one thing you cannot do is have a beer. Now think about this for just a minute: you can join the Army, you can fight and possibly die for your country, but you are barred from legally having a beer. Yet the beer and spirits industry's marketing is aimed at young men and women who likely cannot legally purchase their product.
The arguments for the drinking age being at 21 are spurious at best. My favorite argument used to maintain the drinking age at 21 is:
Lowering MLDA 21 would be medically irresponsible. Alcohol consumption can interfere with development of the young adult brain's frontal lobes, essential for functions such as emotional regulation, planning, and organization. When alcohol consumption interferes with this early adult brain development, the potential for chronic problems such as greater vulnerability to addiction, dangerous risk-taking behavior, reduced decision-making ability, memory loss, depression, violence, and suicide is greater.
If that is the case, then the age of enlistment into the armed forces should be raised to 21, because these days, that is more dangerous than having a beer.
In a February 2015 opinion column in the New York Times, Gabrielle Glaser makes the argument that:
Raising the drinking age hasn't reduced drinking -- it’s merely driven it underground, to the riskiest of settings: unsupervised high school blowouts and fraternity parties that make "Animal House" look quaint. This age segregation leads the drinking away from adults, who could model moderation.
She is right, of course. Instead of teaching our children that drinking alcohol is no big deal, we make them wait until 21 to drink legally. If you tell someone that they cannot have something, it just makes it more enticing—even though most of them have already had a drink, most likely at a party in friend's basement, a frat house, or if the military, in the barracks.
Since the drinking age was raised to 21 nationwide, instead of seeing a decrease in the amount of binge drinking, we have actually seen an increase:
- 18-20 year olds experienced a 56% increase in binge drinking between 1993 and 2001.
- More than 90% of all alcohol consumed by underage drinkers is consumed during binge drinking.
- College students experienced a nearly 10% increase in the rate of drinking to get drunk between 1993 and 2001, which corresponded to an increase in consequences like injuries and assaults, and treatment for alcohol overdose
- Over 1,000 lives of 18-24 year-olds are lost annually to alcohol off the highways, a figure that has been increasing since 1998.
- Approximately one in six teenagers has experienced ‘black out’ spells where they could not remember what happened the previous evening as a result of heavy alcohol use.
- Among college students specifically, alcohol annually contributes to some 1,700 deaths, 599,000 injuries, and 97,000 cases of sexual assault.
- Sixty percent of the deaths that occur as a result of underage drinking happen off the highways.
It is readily apparent that the 21-year-old drinking age is not working. If anything, it has made binge drinking more of a problem than it was prior to raising the drinking age. As a nation, we are comfortable with sending an 18-year-old off to war to get his or her brain scrambled by seeing things no one should ever have to see in combat. Yet that same young man or woman is not responsible enough to have a beer? What is wrong with that picture?
If we, as a nation, have determined that you are an adult at 18, that you can give your life for your country at 18, then we need to rethink our liquor laws. Either raise the age of enlistment to 21 if you are concerned about damage to the developing brain, or allow 18-year-olds to have a beer.