Associations of minimum legal drinking age law with later-life alcohol use and alcohol-attributable mortality from disease and injury: An ecological study.

Commentary on <scp>C</scp>allaghan <i>et al</i>. (2013): Minimum legal drinking age laws protect high school students from both crashes and alcohol abuse

Long-term effects of minimum legal drinking age laws on marijuana and other illicit drug use in adulthood

Exposure to permissive minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) laws not only affects young adults in the short term, but also later in life; for example, individuals who could legally purchase alcohol before the age of 21 are more likely to suffer from drinking problems as older adults, long after the laws had been changed. However, it is not known how permissive MLDA exposure affects specific drinking behavior. This present study uses changes in MLDA laws during the 1970s and 1980s as a natural experiment to investigate the potential impact of permissive MLDA exposure on average alcohol consumption, frequency of drinking, and patterns of binging and more moderate, nonheavy drinking. Policy exposure data were paired with alcohol use data from the 1991 to 1992 National Longitudinal Alcohol Epidemiologic Survey and the 2001 to 2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. Past-year drinkers born between 1949 and 1972 (n = 24,088) were included. Average daily intake, overall drinking frequency, and frequency of both binge episodes (5+ drinks) and days without a binge episode (nonheavy drinking) for the previous year at the time of interview were tracked for each respondent. Exposure to permissive MLDAs was associated with higher odds to report frequent binging and lower odds to report any moderate drinking; these associations were largely driven by men and those who did not attend college. Overall drinking frequency and average alcohol consumption were not affected by MLDA exposure. The ability to legally purchase alcohol before the age of 21 does not seem to increase overall drinking frequency, but our findings suggest that it is associated with certain types of problematic drinking behaviors that persist into later adulthood: more frequent binge episodes and less frequent nonheavy drinking. We also propose that policymakers and critics should not focus on college drinking when evaluating the effectiveness of MLDAs.

Annual state data on auto fatality rates for an 8-year period (1970-77) are examined to study the influence the magnitude of change in a state's minimum legal drinking age (mlda) has on teenage auto fatality rates. Factors taken into account include: the average auto fatality rate prior to the change; the year-to-year variability in this rate; the precise nature of the legal change; and minimum drinking age laws in contiguous states. During the 8-year period there were 20 instances in which a state reduced its mlda and one instance in which the mlda was increased. The principal finding is that a reduction in the mlda from 21 to 18 years of age for all alcoholic beverage types will result in an increase in the auto fatality rate for 18-to 20-year-olds of about 7 percent, and a somewhat smaller increase for 16-to 17-year-olds. It is estimated that the national 18-to 20-year-old auto fatality rate was about 3 percent higher in the mid-1970s than it would have been if minimum age laws had not been amended between 1970 and 1975. This information can serve as one useful input into the policy decision concerning the appropriate minimum drinking age. (Author/TRRL)

Objective—To test the hypothesis that changes in the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) laws would affect drowning among adolescents, the effects of changes in state MLDA laws on drowning were...

This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the impact of the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) laws on alcohol consumption and labor market outcomes of young adults. Using confidential data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 Cohort (NLSY97), I find that granting legal access to alcohol at age 21 leads to an increase in several measures of alcohol consumption. The discrete jump in the alcohol consumption at the MLDA has also negative spillover effects on the labor market outcomes of young adults. In particular, I document that the MLDA is associated with a 1 hour decrease in weekly working hours. However, the effect of the MLDA laws on wages is negative only under certain specifications. These results suggest that the policies designed to curb drinking may not only have desirable effects in reducing alcohol consumption among young adults but also have positive spillover effects on their labor market outcomes.

Assessing the impacts of minimum legal drinking age laws on police-reported violent victimization in Canada from 2009 to 2013

Purpose Alcohol availability is strongly related to excessive alcohol consumption. This study aims to examine social marketing’s response to concerns about retailers’ noncompliance with the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) law by proposing and evaluating a social marketing intervention directed at sellers in off-premise stores. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on a non-randomized quasi-experimental design, focusing on an evaluation of the implementation of the “18 rules!” intervention in four cities in Slovenia. Two waves of underage purchase attempts were conducted pre- and post-intervention in 24 off-premise businesses, following a mystery shopping protocol. Findings The initial rate of retailers’ noncompliance with the MLDA law in off-premise establishments was high. After the social marketing intervention, an increase with compliance with the law was observed; the proportion of cashiers selling alcohol to minors after the intervention decreased from 96 to 67 per cent. Qualitative insight suggests an existence of retailers’ dilemma in complying with the MLDA. Research limitations/implications A social marketing approach could contribute to a better understanding of the social working of the MLDA law. Practical implications A social marketing approach could complement the usual enforcement strategies and contribute to a better understanding of the social working of the MLDA law, and encourage deliberate retailers’ compliance with it while developing valuable exchanges among people and stakeholders. Originality/value The paper conceptualizes retailers’ dilemma in complying with the minimal legal drinking age law and offers social marketing response to it. Results of the study show that also solely non-coercive measures have the potential in increasing retailers’ compliance with regulations.

Minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) is an effective policy tool in preventing youth drinking and short-term alcohol-attributable harm, but studies concerning long-term associations are scarce. In this register-based, national cohort study, we assessed alcohol-attributable morbidity and mortality of cohorts born in 1944-54 in Finland. Data were from the 1970 census, the Care Register for Healthcare (maintained by the Finnish Institute of Health and Welfare), and the Cause-of-Death Register (maintained by Statistics Finland). As MLDA was lowered from 21 years to 18 years in 1969, these cohorts were effectively allowed to buy alcohol from different ages (18-21 years). We used survival analysis to compare their alcohol-attributable mortality and hospitalisations with a 36-year follow-up. Compared with the first cohort (1951) allowed to buy alcohol from age 18, the hazard ratios (HRs) for alcohol-attributable morbidity and mortality were lower in cohorts who could not buy alcohol until age 20 or 21 years. For alcohol-attributable morbidity in those aged 21 years when the reform took place, HR was 0·89 (95% CI 0·86-0·93) for men and 0·87 (0·81-0·94) for women versus those aged 17 years. For alcohol-attributable mortality, HR was 0·86 (0·79-0·93) for men and 0·78 (0·66-0·92) for women aged 21 years when the reform took place. The outcomes of the later-born 1952-54 cohorts did not differ from the 1951 cohort. Earlier cohorts had consistently lower alcohol-attributable mortality and morbidity; however, other simultaneous increases in alcohol availability probably contributed to increased alcohol-related harm among the younger cohorts. Overall, differences between cohorts born only a few years apart highlight late adolescence as a crucial period for the establishment of lifelong patterns of alcohol use and suggest that higher MLDA could be protective for health beyond young adulthood. Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation, Foundation for Economic Education, Emil Aaltonen Foundation, Academy of Finland, European Research Council, and NordForsk.

The effects of minimum legal drinking age 21 laws on alcohol-related driving in the United States

Impacts of the minimum legal drinking age on motor vehicle collisions in Québec, 2000-2012.

My dissertation investigates the effect of three important public policies on labor market and health outcomes. The first chapter of my dissertation uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the impact of the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) laws on alcohol consumption and labor market outcomes of young adults. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1997 Cohort), I find that granting legal access to alcohol at age 21 leads to an increase in several measures of alcohol consumption. In particular, I document that those who are slightly older than 21 are 7 percent more likely to consume alcohol and drink 1.7 days more per month compared with those who are slightly younger than 21. This discrete jump in the alcohol consumption at age 21 has also negative spillover effects on the labor market outcomes of young adults. In particular, I document that age-21 cutoff is associated with a 1.9 hour decrease in weekly working hours. However, the effect of the minimum legal drinking age laws on wages is insignificant. These results are robust under several different parametric and non-parametric models and suggest that the policies designed to curb drinking may not only have desirable effects in reducing alcohol consumption among young adults but may also have positive spillover effects on their labor market outcomes.

The impact of minimum legal drinking age laws on alcohol consumption, smoking, and marijuana use revisited

This paper uses policy-induced variation in legal access to alcohol in the United States to explore interactions between genetic predispositions and health behaviors. It is well known that Minimum Legal Drinking Age (MLDA) laws have discrete impacts on binge drinking behaviors, but less is known about heterogeneity of the effects and the characteristics of individuals most and least affected. Using the Add Health data, this paper explores differential policy effects based on polygenic scores (PGS), which are genome-wide summary measures predicting health outcomes. Specifically, we leverage PGS for alcoholism and for a broader set of risk-taking behaviors to explore heterogeneities in response to the policy and consider mechanisms for the responses. Like previous literature using the Add Health and other datasets, we find main effects of MLDA in increasing recent binge drinking episodes by approximately 5 percentage points. We find MLDA effects are concentrated entirely in individuals with high PGS for alcohol use. We are also able to compare these results with measures of parental alcoholism as a global proxy for family history.

Assessing the effectiveness of minimum legal drinking age and zero tolerance laws in the United States