Young people drink regardless of the drinking age

The argument

The minimum legal drinking age is irrelevant in practice. Statistics from the United States, which has a relatively high national drinking age of 21, indicate that the U.S. national drinking age law has done little to stop underage drinking, even among teens younger than 18. Approximately one half of American teens aged 16 or 17 drink alcohol, and almost a quarter aged 14 or 15 do so as well. Access to alcohol through illegal means such as false identification, theft, and the assistance of complicit adults is simply too easy for the drinking age to function as a preventative law.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Imperfect compliance is not evidence of no effect, and the figures cited do not show what the argument takes them to show. If roughly half of 16- and 17-year-olds drink, half do not; if nearly a quarter of 14- and 15-year-olds do, more than three-quarters do not. Those numbers are equally consistent with a law that substantially suppresses consumption while failing to eliminate it — which is what every prohibition does. The relevant comparison is between rates with the law and rates without it, and the argument never makes it. Generalised, the reasoning would dismantle most of the legal system. People speed, steal and drive without licences in large numbers; none of that is normally taken to show that speed limits, theft statutes and licensing serve no purpose. Laws work at the margin, by raising cost and friction, and the argument's own evidence describes exactly that friction — false identification, theft, complicit adults are the workarounds a functioning barrier produces. The conclusion also goes much further than the premises. 'There should be no drinking age' does not mean 21 rather than 18; it means no minimum at all, so no offence in selling spirits to a twelve-year-old and no legal basis for the licensing enforcement that keeps retailers checking. Evidence that teenagers obtain alcohol despite the law is not an argument for removing the constraint on the supply side, which is where most enforcement actually operates. At most, the premises support the milder sibling position that the threshold is set too high to command compliance and should be lowered to 18. Abolition requires an argument that no minimum serves any purpose, and this is not one.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The figures cited are equally consistent with a law that substantially suppresses drinking without eliminating it — around half of 16- and 17-year-olds and more than three-quarters of 14- and 15-year-olds do not drink on the argument's own numbers — and the relevant comparison, rates with the law against rates without it, is never made. [Rejecting P2] Workarounds such as false identification, theft and complicit adults describe the friction a functioning barrier produces rather than its absence; generalised, the reasoning would dismantle speed limits, theft statutes and licensing, all of which are broken in large numbers and none of which are held to serve no purpose. [Rejecting C] The conclusion vastly exceeds the premises: no drinking age means no offence in serving alcohol to young children and no legal basis for the retail enforcement where most compliance work happens, whereas evidence of teenage evasion supports at most the milder position that the threshold should be lowered to 18.