States that Lower Drinking Age May Endanger Teens in Neighboring States

According to research conducted by the University of Michigan and Stanford University, 18- and 19-year-old drivers who live in a state where the minimum legal drinking age is 21, but live within 25 miles of another state where the drinking age is 18 or 19 are more likely to be involved in a fatal automobile accident.

University of Michigan economist Joel Slemrod, study co-author, commented on the findings: "The availability of different policies just across the border — be they lower excise taxes or the legal sale of fireworks — can compromise the impact of a jurisdiction's own policies and cause efficiency costs as consumers pursue the goods.

"In the case of legalized drinking, being able to drink legally across the border has an additional implication for social costs because the act of drinking and then driving home drunk can itself be dangerous, even fatal, both to the cross-border consumers and other unfortunate drivers and pedestrians."

Slemrod, and Stanford University colleague Michael Lovenheim, studied the effect of states' different minimum drinking ages on alcohol-related traffic deaths since 1977. For the years after 1987, when 21 years of age became the minimum drinking age in all 50 states, they focused on national borders with Canada and Mexico. The researchers found that raising the legal drinking age to 21 has resulted in 5 percent fewer drunk driving fatal automobile accidents for 18-year-olds and 4 percent fewer for 19-year-olds.

(Source: www.sciencedaily.com)

Labels: alcohol, law, underage-drinking

posted by Aspen Education Group @ 8:42 AM