Proposed change in drinking age based on faulty logic

A well-intentioned but misguided group of college and university presidents has been in the news recently for suggesting that we revisit the drinking age and asserting that 21 "is not working." Called the Amethyst Initiative, their proposal would have received a failing grade in my sociology classroom for its faulty logic and how unmindful it is of the history of alcohol policy in the United States.

During the 1960s and 1970s, most states lowered the drinking age from 21 to 18 or 19. Arguments about the draft were cited — "old enough to fight but not to drink" — and in the general liberal climate of those times, good policy gave way to popular sentiment.

The 128 college presidents who have signed on to the Amethyst Initiative apparently are unaware of the extensive research that documented the decade of carnage that followed — not just on our highways but in our bars, streets and neighborhoods. Rates of alcohol-related traffic deaths soared. Rates of alcohol-related violence among those 18 to 20 increased. And as alcohol got more accessible to teens, more 12- and 13-year-olds started drinking.

Beginning in the late 1970s, the states, led by Minnesota, restored the drinking age to 21, and they saw corresponding drops in alcohol-related car accidents and crash-related deaths. There also eventually were reductions in youth homicide, which resulted in part from the decreased access to alcohol, within the 18- to 20-year-old group and those under 18.

The college presidents claim that research does not, however, support the conclusion that the drinking age spurred these changes. And although there are many different studies with inconclusive results, in 2001, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did an analysis of 49 studies. Looking at them together, the CDC found that increasing the drinking age was an effective intervention that significantly reduced harm and death among young people.

On the Web site of Choose Responsibility, the umbrella organization that spearheaded the Amethyst Initiative, the arguments against the drinking age of 21 are particularly flawed. They contend that accidents and deaths dropped simply because the size of the teenage population went down. But they make an error that my undergraduate research-methods students are taught to avoid: They present raw numbers instead of the risk ratio, or the number of negative outcomes divided by the population at risk.