Scoring the Strengths and Weaknesses of Underage Drinking Laws in the United States

• Author: Deborah A. Fisher,Eduardo Romano,Sue Thomas,James C. Fell,Michael Scherer
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.132
• Published date: 01 March 2015
• Date: 01 March 2015

Scoring the Strengths and Weaknesses of

Underage Drinking Laws in the United States

James C. Fell, Sue Thomas, Michael Scherer, Deborah A. Fisher,

and Eduardo Romano

Several studies have examined the impact of a number of minimum legal drinking age 21 (MLDA-

21) laws on underage alcohol consumption and alcohol-related crashes in the United States. These

studies have contributed to our understanding of how alcohol control laws affect drinking and

driving among those who are under age 21. However, much of the extant literature examining

underage drinking laws uses a “Law/No law” coding, which may obscure the variability inherent in

each law. Previous literature has demonstrated that inclusion of law strengths may affect outcomes

and overall data f‌it when compared to “Law/No law” coding. In an effort to assess the relative

strength of states’ underage drinking legislation, a coding system was developed in 2006 and

applied to 16 MLDA-21 laws. The current article updates the previous endeavor and outlines a

detailed strength coding mechanism for the current 20 MLDA-21 laws.

KEY WORDS: strength, underage, laws

Introduction

Background

It is a widely maintained misperception that the minimum legal drinking age

of 21 (MLDA-21) in the United States is embodied in a single law and, therefore,

all states have the same law. In actuality, the MLDA-21 has multiple provisions

targeting outlets that sell alcohol to minors; adults who provide alcohol to minors;

and underage persons who purchase or attempt to purchase, possess, or consume

alcohol. The federal government adopted legislation in 1984 that provided strong

incentives—the risk of losing substantial highway construction funds—for the

states to adopt a uniform minimum drinking age of 21. By 1988, each of the 50

states and the District of Columbia (DC) had passed laws that made it illegal for

persons under the age of 21 to possess and purchase or attempt to purchase

alcohol. Later, all states and DC enacted laws prohibiting the furnishing or selling

of alcohol to individuals under the age of 21 years. To support the core MLDA-21

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laws, states have also expanded MLDA-21 laws that target youth. For example,

since drivers under age 21 are not supposed to consume any alcohol, zero

tolerance (ZT) laws were adopted that provide for lower blood alcohol concentra-

tion (BAC) limits for drivers under the age of 21 years. Graduated driver licensing

(GDL) laws with nighttime driving restrictions have also been adopted which

limit underage drivers’ availability to alcohol and their drinking and driving.

Laws making it illegal for youth to use fake identif‌ication in order to purchase

alcohol have also been passed by the states. Other MLDA-21 laws focus on

affecting the behavior of those who sell or furnish alcohol such as those that

mandate beer keg registration (or regulation), prohibitions on hosting underage

drinking parties, and civil liability laws targeting commercial and noncommercial

providers of alcohol to underage youth, among others. The National Highway

Traff‌ic Safety Administration (NHTSA) within the U.S. Department of Transpor-

tation estimates that MLDA-21 laws have reduced traff‌ic fatalities involving

youth by 13 percent (NHTSA, 2014). However, these laws vary considerably from

state to state, and only one state (Utah) has all 20 legal components that we have

documented. Comparatively, Kentucky has adopted only 9 of the 20 MLDA-21

laws we document in this article. In addition, many MLDA-21 laws in the states

have numerous exceptions, weak sanctions for violations, and make enforcement

very diff‌icult. Thus, the current U.S. effort to control underage drinking involves

a variable package of legislative measures, some of which have very strong

provisions while others contain numerous exemptions and make enforcement

diff‌icult.

Several studies have been co nducted to determine the imp act of drinking

age laws on underage alcoho l consumption and alcohol -related crashes. Many

of these studies have dem onstrated that the proh ibition of youth from

possessing alcohol and t he prohibition of youth fro m purchasing alcohol (the

two core MLDA-21 laws) reduce underage drinkin g-and-driving fatalit ies

substantially (e.g., A rnold, 1985; Decker, Gr aitcer, & Schaffner, 1988; O’Malley

& Wagenaar, 1991; Ponicki, Gruenewald, & LaScala, 20 07; Shults et al., 2001;

Toomey, Rosenfeld, & Wagenaar, 1996; Wagenaar & To omey, 2002; Williams,

Zador, Harris, & Karpf, 1983 ; Womble, 1989).

These studies have contributed to our understanding of how MLDA-21 laws

affect drinking and driving behaviors among those who are too young to legally

consume alcohol. Specif‌ically, Fell and his colleagues (Fell, Fisher, Voas, Black-

man, & Tippets, 2009) examined six laws that: (i) make it illegal for underaged

individuals to publicly possess alcohol, (ii) make it illegal for underaged

individuals to purchase or attempt to purchase alcohol, (iii) mandate that beer

kegs be registered to the purchaser, (iv) establish negligible BAC limits (i.e., zero

tolerance) for alcohol in underage drivers, (v) establish GDL systems with

nighttime restrictions to reduce youth access to alcohol, and (vi) implement “use

and lose” penalties resulting in an underaged driver’s license being suspended in

the event of an alcohol violation. In that 2009 study, researchers examined the

effective dates for each of these laws to determine if their enactment signif‌icantly

affected the ratios of underage drinking drivers to underage nondrinking drivers

Fell et al.: Strengths and Weaknesses of Underage Drinking Laws 29