Protecting teens from the dangers of alcohol use and abuse:
wishful thinking versus science
Convened by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, American Medical Association, National Transportation Safety Board, and Insurance Institute for Highway Safety to support 21 minimum drinking age
Presentation by Adrian Lund, IIHS president
October 9, 2007 • Washington, DC
In 1972, at a conference on road safety in Canberra, Australia, William Haddon Jr., M.D., the first head of what is now the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and President of IIHS from 1969-1985, talked about the beginning of a transition
"away from a pre-scientific period. That is, from a period in which folk culture has dominated — in which virtually everyone, both in and out of public life, has been a self-certified expert with his own pet, dogmatically advanced panacea — in which the notion has been virtually absent that public and private conclusions, pronouncements and measures to reduce the losses should be based on well-done, carefully scientific determinations of relevance and efficacy rather than on the unsubstantiated assertions of some individual or group."
We are here today because this transition to science-based approaches to reducing the deaths and injuries from motor vehicle crashes is not yet complete. Thirty-five years later, John M. McCardell, Jr. has mounted a campaign to reduce the drinking age from 21 to 18 in the United States. His justification — a desire to reduce the clandestine and sometimes biologically dangerous levels of alcohol consumption among 18-20 year-olds — is laudable. However, his reasoning about what works is quintessentially pre-scientific. Highway safety policies need to be grounded in solid research, not wishful thinking. His arguments are demonstrably wrong. My comments today are limited to his two central theses:
- that the benefits of the 21-year-old drinking age are unproven; and
- that alcohol education for teens promises to be more effective in dealing with the problem of teen alcohol use and abuse.
Both theses are contradicted by fact.
Teen crashes vary with drinking age laws
On his website, Mr. McCardell says, "Advocates of the 21-year-old drinking age have long argued that the decrease in fatalities was a result of the lowered drinking age but cannot offer a cause and effect relationship."
That view ignores 30 years of research.
Status Report, April 9, 1974
Status Report, July 15, 1981
Status Report, July 15, 1981
The truth is, the cause and effect are clear. lf we lower the drinking age, we will be killing more teens on the highway. Actions among the states in lowering, raising, lowering, and raising again the age at which it is legal to purchase alcohol have to evaluate the effects of these changes on motor vehicle crashes.
History of US minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) laws
IIHS's first study in 1974 looked at two states and one Canadian province that lowered the drinking age, carefully comparing their experience to that of adjacent states that did not change. That study showed that the number of 15-20 year-olds involved in fatal crashes increased in the jurisdictions that lowered the drinking age.
Subsequently, in the late 1970s, states began to increase drinking ages again. Again, it was possible to compare states that made this change to states that didn't. Again, we saw a change related to the drinking age — this time, fatal crash rates declined as teen drinking and teen drinking and driving declined.
IIHS has been a leader in studying the effect of drinking age, but it hasn't been alone.
CDC review of evidence regarding interventions to reduce alcohol-impaired driving
Shults et al., 2001
Although there's variation the effects are consistent: deaths go up when the drinking age is lowered and they go down when it is raised. The 21-year-old drinking age is saving lives.
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This is a good article you can read the rest at www.iihs.org
Keep the kids away from your liquor cabinet!
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