Raising the legal drinking age to 21 resulted in an 11-percent decrease in the number of drunk teenagers involved in fatal car crashes, according to new research from the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE).
Reuters reported July 1 that the decline in alcohol-related deaths could be correlated to the passage of laws in the 1980s that barred those under age 21 from buying or possessing alcohol. They warned that recent proposals to lower the drinking age risked undoing that progress; such legislation has been introduced in at least eight states.
States that punish underage drinkers for using fake IDs had 14-percent fewer teen drunk-driving deaths than states without such laws, the researchers added.
The research, which was funded by the Substance Abuse Policy Research Foundation, will be published in the July 2008 issue of the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention.
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