Do drinking-age laws have an impact on crime? Evidence from Canada, 2009–2013

Highlights

• Release from minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) laws is associated with sharp increases in crimes by young adults.

• Male crime patterns increased immediately after the drinking age.

• Female violent and disorderly-conduct crimes increased sharply following the MLDA.

• Raising the MLDA would likely attenuate crime in newly alcohol-restricted age groups.

Abstract

Background

International debate is ongoing about the effectiveness of minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) laws. In Canada, the MLDA is 18 years of age in Alberta, Manitoba and Québec, and 19 in the rest of the country. Surprisingly few prior studies have examined the potential impacts of MLDA legislation on crime, and the current study addresses this gap.

Methods

Regression-discontinuity analyses of police-reported criminal incidents from the 2009–2013 Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Survey, Canada’s crime database.

Results

Nationally, in comparison to males slightly younger than the MLDA, those just older than the MLDA had sharp increases in: all crimes, (7.6%; 95% CI = 3.7%–11%, P < 0.001); violent crimes, (7.4%; 95% CI = 0.2%–14.6%, P = 0.043); property crimes, (4.8%; 95% CI = 0.02%–9.5%, P = 0.049); and disorderly conduct, (29.4%; 95% CI = 15.6%–43.3%, P < 0.001). Among females, national criminal incidents increased sharply following the MLDA in: all crimes, (10.4%; 95% CI = 3.8%–17.0%, P = 0.002), violent crimes, (14.9%; 95% CI = 6.4–23.2, P = 0.001); and disorderly conduct, (35.3%; 95% CI = 11.6–58.9, P = 0.004). Among both males and females, there was no evidence of significant changes in cannabis- or narcotics-related crimes (quasi-control outcomes) vis-à-vis the MLDA (P > 0.05).

Conclusion

Release from drinking-age laws appears to be associated with immediate increases in population-level violent and nonviolent crimes among young people in Canada.

Introduction

Alcohol use is the leading contributor to the worldwide burden of injury, disability, and mortality among individuals aged 10–24 years old (Gore et al., 2011). In efforts to reduce these alcohol-related harms, many countries worldwide have implemented minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) laws (International Center for Alcohol Policies, 2015), which usually impose age-based restrictions on the consumption, purchase, and possession of alcohol among young people. In Canada, the MLDA is 18 years of age in Alberta, Manitoba and Québec, and 19 in the rest of the country.

International debate is ongoing about the effectiveness of drinking-age laws (Giesbrecht et al., 2013, DeJong and Blanchette, 2014, Kypri et al., 2014, Pitts et al., 2014). Recently, the Canadian Public Health Association (2011) has recommended increasing the MLDA to 19 years of age across all provinces, and a recent Canadian expert panel on alcohol policy has identified a national MLDA of 21 years as the ideal (Giesbrecht et al., 2013). Calls for increasing age-based restrictions on alcohol use among young people run counter to current, broader policy developments in some provinces towards increased convenience of liquor access, greater privatization of alcohol sales (away from a government monopoly model), and economic gains (and taxation revenue) through increased alcohol sales and profits (MADD Canada, 2014). In addition, some provincial political parties have proposed recent platforms to lower the status-quo legal drinking age (CBC News, 2013) or intentionally have maintained the MLDA-18-years position (Owen, 2014).

Given that a large and long-standing body of work has demonstrated a consistent association between alcohol consumption and a broad range of crime (Joksch and Jones, 1993, Graham and West, 2001), it is striking that relatively few studies have addressed the potential impact of drinking-age laws on criminal behavior among young people, especially violence and other alcohol-related crimes (Wagenaar and Toomey, 2002). Almost all the literature in this area has focused on the impacts of the MLDA on traffic-related crimes (e.g., alcohol-impaired driving; Wagenaar and Toomey, 2002, McCartt et al., 2010, Carpenter and Dobkin, 2015). At least in our understanding, only four original studies (and one replication) have addressed directly the relation between MLDA legislation and non-traffic-related crimes (Smith and Burvill, 1987, Davis and Reynolds, 1990, Joksch and Jones, 1993, Carpenter, 2005, Carpenter and Dobkin, 2015), and only one of these (Carpenter and Dobkin, 2015) can provide recent data. Using California arrest data from 1976 to 2006 and a regression-discontinuity research design, Carpenter and Dobkin (2015) found that in comparison to youth slightly younger than the MLDA, those just older had sharp and significant increases in assault, robbery, driving-related crimes, and a range of nuisance crimes.

The remaining studies are much older, drawing on natural experiments to compare rates of crime pre- and post-implementation of jurisdictional MLDA laws. Joksch and Jones (1993) examined population-based crime patterns in 18 US states increasing their MLDA to 21 years during the period from 1981 to 1986, and the findings demonstrated significant decreases in disorderly conduct and vandalism, but not in violent crimes in the newly alcohol-restricted age groups. Similarly, Australian researchers found that legislated decreases in the MLDA in the early 1970s from 21 to 18 years in three Australian states were associated with significant increases in nonviolent crimes (e.g., burglary, larceny, drunkenness) and, in one state, violent crimes among males, with significant increases also appearing in the all-crimes category among females (Smith and Burvill, 1987). Still other researchers found no evidence of increases in self-reported property-crime perpetration in affected undergraduate students vis-à-vis New York State MLDA changes from 19 to 21 years in the mid-1980s (Davis and Reynolds, 1990).

In light of current debates and the paucity of evidence in this area, it is important to provide more comprehensive research to inform the MLDA debates in Canada and other countries. A key advantage of the current approach is that it draws upon 2009–2013 data from Canada’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) survey—a national, population-based registry of all police-confirmed crimes in Canada. The current study focuses on those crime outcomes prominently associated with alcohol in the prior alcohol-crime (Greenfeld, 1998, Graham and West, 2001, Pernanen et al., 2002) or MLDA-crime literature (Smith and Burvill, 1987, Davis and Reynolds, 1990, Joksch and Jones, 1993, Carpenter, 2005, Carpenter and Dobkin, 2015): violent crimes, property crimes, and disorderly conduct. It was expected that in comparison to their counterparts slightly younger than the MLDA, individuals just older than the MLDA would have significant and sharp increases in these alcohol-related crime outcomes. In addition, the research design employed two crime-outcome quasi-controls: cannabis-related offenses; and narcotics-related offenses. Given that prior Canadian research has demonstrated only a very small alcohol-attributable fraction (0.02) for drug-related crimes (Pernanen et al., 2002), these crimes were expected to be distributed smoothly across the MLDA transition, showing no evidence of significant change associated with the drinking age.