A look at lowering the drinking age

The Star Tribune looks at the effort among some Minnesota legislators in reducing the legal age for consuming alcohol in bars in restaurants (but not liquor stores). It's a decent piece, despite showing a slight bias against it.

• Some state legislators want drinking age lowered to 18

After reading this article and the recent New York Times piece, I'm struck that we probably need more research on the subject. One would think we'd have a good idea on how healthy and unhealthy drinking habits are developed, but the jury is still out.

I don't know how you test the effects of different drinking ages from a public health perspective. I know that when the age was raised nationwide in the 1980s, drunk driving fatalities went down. The problem is that we are living in a different world today where driving under the influence is still a significant problem, but not as socially acceptable as it once was. Another problem is that I imagine it would be hard to link a legal drinking age change to a change in attitudes and practices five, ten, fifteen years down the road.

My guess is that this conversation will continue on and off for a while.