The debate on whether the minimum drinking age should be lowered from the nationally mandated age of 21 years old to 18 years old is ongoing, but a recent study warns that there is plenty at stake.

Andrew Plunk, assistant professor of pediatrics at Eastern Virginia Medical School, and his colleagues studied changes in the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) in the 1970s and 1980s to investigate how underage exposure to lower minimum drinking ages affected high school dropout rates.

In their research published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs on Sept. 28, they found that states with a lower minimum drinking age saw more high school dropouts, on top of previously documented effects, such as higher substance abuse and lower educational attainment.

Plunk and his colleagues analyzed data from public use microdata samples of the 1990 and 2000 censuses, as well as from the National Longitudinal Alcohol Epidemiological Survey (NLAES) and the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC).

Poring through high school graduation records, the researchers found that 17-year-old subjects—the age when one is about to graduate from high school—were affected by their 18-year-old peers, with a 3 percent increase in dropout rates across the whole sample and 4 percent increase in "already at-risk groups" such as blacks and Hispanics.

Other at-risk groups were women and children of parents with alcohol problems. In earlier studies, children of alcoholic parents are "at greater risk for deviant behaviors" than the control group, and this can bring about effects including "increased sensitivity to the environmental effects of a more permissive drinking age."

Plunk noted that while it is already likely for minorities to face graduation challenges given poverty and dysfunction, lowering drinking age appears to worsen their case.

While acknowledging that other external environmental factors are at play in the link between dropout rates and lowering drinking age, Plunk emphasized the impact of a reduced drinking age on minors.

"These are people who are 15, 16, 17, people who we still consider children. Protecting them is a very important thing," Plunk said.

The findings also suggest that "policy can promote less dangerous drinking behavior even when familial risk of alcohol use disorders is high."

Photo: Daniel Lee | Flickr