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Comment by Jach | Hacker News Reader

To go off topic some more, but the drinking age isn't as arbitrary as, say, the 'adult age' of 18. I'm pretty sure there's some research that your brain hasn't finished developing until around 21, and possible studies on top of that which suggest early drinking may hurt your brain.

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That would be kinda odd, considering the drinking age varies from country to country and it isn’t 21 in most of them. In Germany, for example, you can drink (in public) and buy beer and wine when you turn 16, all other alcohol when you turn 18.

Wikipedia has this informative table: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_drinking_age

I would summarize it as follows: 18 wins. I suspect not for any scientific reasons.

So what’s the history of the 21? 21 was the age of majority when prohibition ended. Most states set their legal drinking age accordingly and that’s that. Today all states have 21 as the legal drinking age since they would lose federal funding if the didn’t.

By the way, today the age of majority is 18 in all but three states.

All those drinking age limits are arbitrary. I’m actually fine with that, as long as grownups can buy alcohol. Alcohol may still be harmful for 18-year-olds (well, even more harmful than alcohol is anyway) but I don’t think it’s the government’s job to tell grownups what to do when it comes to things like alcohol or smoking or various (not sure whether I want to write all) other drugs.

(It’s even possible to have a sensible argument about whether younger kids should be allowed to buy alcohol. When you drink too much beer when you are 16 in Germany you can’t kill anyone driving since you can only get your driver’s license with 18. Maybe those two years give those kids the time to get it out of their system and to learn about the effects alcohol has on them. On the other hand American’s can already have up to five years of driving experience when they are first legally allowed to drink, but I don’t think experience helps you when you are drunk driving. You just shouldn’t do it. That would be an interesting social science study – are young Americans or Germans more likely to drunk drive?)

Yes, I didn't mean to turn this into a debate on the merits of alcohol consumption or the role of the government in regulating it. I was using ex post facto research (that's probably not very strong anyway) as a rationalization for the current drinking age to suggest it's not just an "arbitrary number", but as I said in cousin comment there are similar justifications for other seemingly arbitrary numbers.

Then the 'adult age' should be 21 too, because at 18 you're not a grownup yet. And it seems that European children grow faster because they can drink at 18 or less (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_age). Or maybe brain research only exists in the US.

The research is that if you don't have 21 as a drinking age your state doesn't get as much federal funding for highways. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_A...

"Shortly after repeal of Prohibition in 1933, most states set their purchase ages at 21 since that was the age of majority at the time, but a few set their limits lower."

Thanks for the historical correction. It looks like it was set at 21 for states before Prohibition as well. I'll admit then that research on teenagers is more rationalization for keeping the limit where it is, and you can similarly find other rationalizations for keeping/changing other seemingly arbitrary age limits like 18 for adulthood, 16 for driving (and counter-reasons, etc.) Also I may be putting too much stock in the available evidence, e.g. here's a writeup from 2006: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/health/04teen.html

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