AIMING TO LOWER highway fatality rates among 18-year-old drivers, President Reagan signed into law the National Minimum Drinking Age Act (NMDA) on July 17, 1984. The NMDA included a holdback clause that compelled states to raise their alcohol purchase and possession age from 18 to 21 or lose 10 percent of their federal highway grant money.

Not surprisingly, every state complied with the NMDA, because losing billions of dollars is a financial threat no state could long endure. As hoped for, highway fatalities among 18-year-olds decreased, but this is where the good news ended.

Since 1984, 21 has become the new 18. Highway fatalities among 21-year-olds have increased. Non-highway alcohol-related fatalities among young people are up. Underage binge drinking frequency and intensity are up. The concentration of alcohol in the beverages being consumed by underage drinkers is up. And prosecutions for underage drinking, an increasingly stigmatizing charge for college-bound and workforce-bound teens, are up.

The NMDA unjustly presumes that millions of adult Americans between the ages of 18 and 21 who can choose to vote, fight in war, have an abortion, marry, foster and adopt children, fly airplanes, convey modes of public transportation, run for public office, serve on juries, qualify for credit, pose in pornographic materials, and buy for themselves homes, cars, guns, contraception, cigarettes and gambling wagers cannot choose to drink alcohol responsibly.

Restricting alcohol for bona-fide adults makes the NMDA a de facto Prohibition. And we know from our unusual history that prohibitions result in more, not less, alcohol injury and disrespect for the rule of law. The NMDA is no exception to this rule.

In spite of its public-health failure and social injustice, repeal or modification of the NMDA is unlikely. Growing up alongside the NMDA has been an ideological infrastructure I call the temperance/industrial complex (TIC). Launched with over $250 million in support from the Neo-Prohibitionist Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), this vast consortium of prevention, intervention, treatment, recovery, legislative, bureaucratic, scientific, academic, medical, media and law-enforcement professionals has ballooned into a multibillion-dollar-a-year business capable of opening new markets, exerting political influence and commissioning research.

Most of the TIC’s research isn’t science at all because its methodology is flawed and rarely subjected to peer-review.

An excellent case in point was provided to us by Pam Steager and Sandra DelSesto, both substance-abuse therapists working in Rhode Island, in their Feb. 19 Commentary piece “Professor understates teen-drinking peril.” Their piece took aim at Dwight Heath, Brown University professor emeritus and internationally renowned scholar on the subject of alcohol use across cultures. Dr. Heath is regarded as the father of the field of comparative alcohol studies and has consulted with parties on all sides of the alcohol issue for nearly five decades.

Describing Dr. Heath’s favorable views on European alcohol acculturation as “dangerously uninformed” and requiring “current and scientific-based clarification,” Ms. Steager and Ms. DelSesto endeavored to set Dr. Heath straight with a dose of dangerously uninformed science fiction.

Their first citation was an American Medical Association (AMA) report, funded by the RWJF and titled “Harmful Consequences of Alcohol Use on Brains of Children, Adolescents and College Students.” According to an AMA press release, this report promises “a comprehensive compilation of two decades of scientific research on how alcohol alters the developing brain and causes possibly irreversible damage.”

Bear in mind the brain-damage argument turns on the myth that developing brains are less resilient to alcohol use than adult brains. To date no credible science has supported this claim.

Yet the AMA report promises to “dispel the myth that youth are more resilient than adults to the adverse effects of drinking.” Are we to suppose by this statement that because developing brains are not more resilient than developed brains that they are therefore less resilient? If you’re confused you are supposed to be.

Next, Ms. Steager and Ms. DelSesto bravely venture into Dr. Heath’s academic territory, Europe. They cite a 2005 U.S. Department of Justice report titled “Youth drinking rates and problems: A comparison of European countries and the United States.” The Pacific Institute for Research Evaluation (PIRE), a policy-analysis firm that has enjoyed generous support from the RWJF, prepared this report for the Justice Department.

You might expect a report that promises to compare “rates” with “problems” would provide data on harm. It doesn’t. The unstated presumption here is that any alcohol consumption is harmful. Therefore, increased rate equals increased harm. PIRE’s report concludes that 10th-grade European youths binge-drink more often than 10th grade American youths do.

Interesting sound bite, except that the European and American surveys asked respondents to report their binge drinking activities over different periods of time: 30 days for the Europeans and 14 days for the Americans. Guess which group reported more incidents of bingeing? Guess what this says about the NMDA?

We are the only country in the western world (one of only seven countries in the entire world, including five that are predominately Muslim or Buddhist) with a drinking age as high as 21. Our approach to alcohol is radical, and it hasn’t worked.

Most countries in the world (and this country until 1984) have both lower drinking ages and lower rates of alcohol-related mortality and morbidity. Why this paradox is true is not as clear as the fact that it is true: Travel to Europe and see for yourself.

We need to modify or eliminate the holdback clause of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act so that states can again debate and deploy, without risking financial ruin, other alcohol-policy options. One obvious and proven option to consider is a lower drinking age. But there are other valid options to consider. The point is to consider all of them.

We need to continue encouraging the minority of our young people who responsibly choose not to drink, but we also have to again include the majority of young people who choose to drink responsibly.

Our sensible elders understood the importance of this public trust when they handed it down to us. Now we need to be sensible and remove the legal and ideological impediments that deny us the opportunity to discuss our options for sharing this trust with our teenage adults and children.

Jim Tumber, of Barrington, is the father of three teens and Rhode Island director for Choose Responsibility, a national organization that promotes informed public debate over reckless and excessive drinking ( jtumber@chooseresponsibility.org).