I haven’t been reading as much politics lately, so I missed the recent open letter by 100 college and university presidents calling for lowering the national drinking age to 18. I only came across it by accident, in a column by one of the more ridiculous members of the religious right who actually supported the move. Since then I’ve read a number of columns taking the opposite stance - and trotting out the old statistics that states that lowered their ages to 18 in the 1970s had higher traffic fatalities in the relevant age groups, fatalities which declined again in 1988 when, thanks to wholly unconstitutional pressure from the federal government, the drinking age went back up to 21.
What I didn’t expect to see was a column making this case in Reason.
But I probably should have. Reason, as I have pointed out before, is often Libertarian-in-name-only. And while granting the drinking age isn’t really a partisan issue — there is no Libertarian principle that opposes regulation of substances for minors, and where to fix the age of majority is largely arbitrary — there are reasons to expect that most sincere Libertarians would favor this particular move.
They are:
(1) Consistency - One of the easiest potshots to take at the current statute is to point out that men can take up arms and die for their country at 18, but they can’t pop in a bar after work and have a drink. Here’s how Steve Chapman’s column waves its hand on this issue:
There are other arguments for lowering the age. Maybe the most popular is that if you’re old enough to join the Army and die for your country, you’re old enough to buy a beer. But there is a good reason to avoid such blind consistency. Among the qualities that make 18-year-olds such good soldiers are their fearlessness and sense of immortality - traits that do not mix well with alcohol.
Yes, and traits that also do not go well with entrusting these people with the decision to join the Army, now that you point it out. More to the point: traits that do not magically vanish at 21. If the reasons 18-year-olds make “such good soldiers” include that they’re fearless and immortal, why aren’t 16-year-olds allowed to join up? The answer is simple: we let 18 year olds make this decision not because we believe they magically become mature enough at 18, but because we’ve all agreed on an arbitrary age at which to consider them adults. Some of them are adults long before this point, some of them won’t be until well into their 30s. And yet they all get the right to vote and enlist - no proof of emotional maturity required.
Why permit 18-year-olds to vote but not drink? Because they have not shown a disproportionate tendency to abuse the franchise, to the peril of innocent bystanders.
No - but that’s because it is impossible to prove an “abuse” of the franchise “to the peril of innocent bystanders.” What would that honestly even mean? Notwithstanding, maintaining that an average 18-year-old is not mature enough to drink and that he makes a better soldier because of the same immaturity makes it more than a bit disingenuous to then turn around and let him vote on the technicality that there is no direct evidence that he is abusing the franchise. Sorry, but if you’re committed to defining “minor” for the purposes of drinking as 21, you really ought to be committed to defining it that way for voting and enlistment as well.
(2) States’ Rights - Arguably more important to Libertarians should be the nontrivial states’ rights and constitutional issues. It isn’t the federal government’s role to regulate things like the drinking age, and if they’re going to do it anyway they need to balls up and make a law about it, rather than sneaking it in under federal highway funding eligibility stipulations. The same voters that send the highway funds to the feds as tax dollars are all state voters too, after all. To claim that they know what they want in terms of a drinking age when they vote nationally but haven’t a clue when voting locally is more than a little silly. Especially when we’re taking a line of argument like the one Mr. Chapman takes in this column - i.e. that the drinking age is an arbitrary fixation that should be determined by empirical experience rather than principled consistency. In explaining why 18 year olds are mysteriously mature enough to fight and die in war but not to drink, there’s surely plenty of room for differences in the situation across state borders?
Besides, we don’t have a single age threshold for adulthood. We give driver’s licenses to 16-year-olds, but a 20-year-old Marine returning from Iraq will find he may not buy a handgun or gamble in a casino.
That’s because these are state-level discrepancies. Some states never allow gambling at all, for example - and the legal driving age has been 21 in places like Colorado in the past. One sticking point in all our craws growing up in Charlotte, for example, was that kids in South Carolina - a 40min. drive away - could drive at 15. We had to wait that extra year. Marriage laws, laws on statutory rape - the list goes on and on of differing age limits. And the one thing all these capricious limits have in common - with the one glaring exception of the drinking age - is that they are state-level determinations. What, one wonders, makes alcohol so special that states can’t be trusted to govern their own citizens on this account as well?
Indeed, I should think any self-styled Libertarian would be especially concerned about letting the federal government make arbitrary regulations where drugs are concerned, given the cavalier manner in which the Attorney General’s office tramples over state perrogatives in fighting the War on Drugs.
Now, to be fair, the numbers are on Mr. Chapman’s side. There’s plenty of reliable evidence that lowered drinking ages are indeed accompanied by increases in highway fatalities - especially in the age groups in question. But these numbers are not the beginning and end of the issue. Anyone serious about a national drinking age of 21 needs to think seriously about raising the national service and voting ages as well. And anyone who thinks the federal government has the authority to regulate the drinking age nationwide really owes us an explanation for where it got this authority, why the states don’t have it instead, and why we shouldn’t be too concerned about abuse. What I think it is improper to do in political circles - especially purportedly “libertarian” political circles - is assert that the success of a particular program in getting the stats to come out the way you want is the whole of the argument. Principles like states’ rights, the proper role of the federal government, and even application of the law cannot be brushed aside for the sake of pushing the drunk driving numbers one way or the other - certainly not without any discussion whatever of possible alternative ways to achieve the same goal. So I’m sorry Mr. Chapman, but you’ll have to do better than this.