Drinking Age Laws Allowing Lower Drinking Ages Can Have An Impact On Later Drinking Patterns

Lower minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) laws have been associated with short-term effects such as a greater number of traffic fatalities and teen suicides. A new study has investigated the long-term and persistent linkages between permissive MLDA laws and specific drinking behaviors such as average alcohol consumption, frequency of drinking, patterns of binge drinking, and moderate drinking. Findings support an association with problematic drinking behaviors that persist into later adulthood, such as more frequent binge episodes.

Results will be published in the March 2013 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.

"Drinking age laws have been very effective in reducing alcohol related problems," said Andrew D. Plunk, post-doctoral research fellow at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis as well as corresponding author for the study. "Many researchers have studied the laws and there is quite a bit of evidence supporting their positive impact, especially for reducing alcohol consumption and traffic fatalities for those under the age of 21."

"Alcohol is the leading substance of abuse among youth in the United States," added Ralph Hingson, director of the Division of Epidemiology and Prevention Research at NIAAA. "Underage persons frequently binge drink, averaging six drinks per occasion five times per month."

Hingson said that persons under 21 who binge frequently are more likely to engage in a variety of behaviors that place themselves and others at risk: driving after drinking, riding with drinking drivers, never wearing safety belts, carrying weapons, having unplanned and unprotected sex, and illicit drug use. "Frequent bingers are also more likely to be injured in physical fights and suicide attempts," he said. "Furthermore, human brain development continues into the third decade of life, raising concern that heavy adolescent alcohol misuse may produce cognitive deficits and impairment in memory and attention. Finally, numerous studies have linked binge drinking to poorer academic performance."

Hingson explained that, in 1984, when less than half the states had a minimum legal drinking age of 21, the U.S. Congress passed legislation to withhold highway construction funds from states that did not raise the legal drinking age to 21. By 1988, it became illegal to sell alcohol to persons under age 21 in all states. "A review of 49 studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals found that, when the legal drinking age was lowered in many states during the 1970s and early 1980s, there was a 10 percent increase in average alcohol-related traffic crashes in the states that lowered the age, whereas in states that raised the drinking age, there was a 16 percent decline in alcohol-related traffic crashes," he said. "Much less is known about the effects of raising the legal drinking age on persons older than 21."

"Our research is different for a few reasons," said Plunk. "First, most studies have focused on the immediate or short-term impact of MLDA laws on drinking, whether the outcome is drinking behavior or traffic fatalities. Second, while there has been some prior research on the long-term impact of MLDA laws on binge drinking, to my knowledge we are the first to look at the impact on both binge drinking and non-heavy drinking, that is, more moderate drinking that didn't cross the binge threshold. Third, we were specifically interested in looking at how the effects of these laws might have been different based on whether or not an individual attended college, which previous research on the long-term impact of the laws didn't do."