College students will do anything to drink, it seems. I know someone who’s purchased a fake ID that said they were 92 years old. I’ve heard many stories from students who’ve been tricked out of anywhere from $70 to $100 by fake ID scams, many of which are inescapable on the University of Minnesota Snapchat story. 

It seems morally and logically inconsistent at the very least to keep the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, preventing anyone under the age of 21 from legally purchasing and consuming alcohol. This column is not a cop-out or advocacy for drinking in general, but rather an urging toward consistency for the sake of preserving the rule of law. This ineffective and outdated act incentivizes and normalizes further criminal behavior through the fake identification market. 

The age of 18 is generally considered the age of adulthood in the United States. This birthday unlocks a host of new powers and responsibilities. You can now buy lottery tickets, vote in elections and participate in jury duty. 

So why is it that the drinking age is still 21? The prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain responsible for impulse control and decision making — does not fully develop until around the age of 25. We thrust almost every adult responsibility upon 18-year-olds, yet don’t allow them to drink until three years later.

University of Minnesota second-year student Hagan Burnett said the National Minimum Drinking Age Act is ineffective in preventing underage drinking. 

“It’s just like trying to ban weed, trying to ban guns or even trying to ban abortion,” Burnett said. “People are going to do it anyway. You’re just making it unsafe.”

Having a law that’s normalized as being more often broken than obeyed creates troubling implications for the authority of law and permits criminal behavior. It also bolsters the market for fake identification, which in some states and circumstances is a felony. 

Underage drinking is a well-known phenomenon in this country. By the age of 18, more than 70% of teens have had at least one drink. That number is from 2022, and the legal drinking age has been 21 since 1984. 

A common defense of the act is that it’s helped decrease drunk driving. After all, drunk driving fatalities have decreased 44% since 1982. But this decrease can’t all be chalked up to the  National Minimum Drinking Age Act. Since 1984, we’ve seen a culture shift that made impaired driving socially and legally unacceptable, and rideshare apps have provided convenient and safe transportation options, further contributing to this decrease. Drunk driving prevention wasn’t even enforced nationwide until 1988. 

We have the technology nowadays to institute more robust public transportation or even, heaven forbid, more walkable and human-centered urban planning to reduce accidents more broadly. 

This law just doesn’t do what it’s supposed to. Maybe in 1984, increasing the drinking age helped solve the problem of drunk driving, but whether it still moves the needle is debatable. 

Generation Z is also a markedly more sober generation than its older counterparts. Despite this, the demand for fake identification is steadfast. An Ohio State University survey in 2021 found that around 69% of respondents had used or owned a fake ID. The technology used to make them is also quickly advancing, while detection technology lags. This industry’s proliferation and optimization are direct results of the underage drinking market that the national drinking age unintentionally created. 

University third-year student Talesh Tarchand said about half of his peers have owned some form of fake ID. 

“It’s not safe for people to do that, and it’s kind of seen as a normal thing in society,” Tarchand said. “You see it on Snapchat stories, people are like, ‘Order fakes through here,’ and it feels like you’re committing a crime, because you are.”  

We can’t just choose to ignore or not enforce certain laws, especially if they’re fueling industries that incentivize criminal behavior and undermine our government’s identification system. 

The National Minimum Drinking Age Act did its job and was a good placeholder for the time, but it hasn’t kept up with the direction society has moved. We should honor its legacy by valuing human life over profit incentives and doing away with laws that no longer serve their purpose. We also need to get to the root of this issue and stop allowing reckless 18-year-olds to undermine our institutions. 

Allowing Fake ID culture creates a slippery slope we’re charging toward, instead of thinking up a new solution to our underage drinking problem.