Interesting I've seen people make the arguments to lower the drinking age to 16 to give parents the control needed to introduce their kids to alcohol, learn how to use it and make drinking "not that big of a deal." I'm very much on the fence here. On one hand, having your kid get drunk for the first time at home is a whole hell of a lot better than getting drunk god-knows-where with whom-the-hell-knows at some party somewhere. On the other hand, 16 year olds are already distracted enough while driving that I can see a potential uptick in drunk driving. Europe allows 16 year olds to drink, but they have a population density that facilitates widely used public transit and these kids are not behind the wheel. The other argument is that binge drinking is due to people having no or minimal alcohol exposure before leaving home. The forbidden is always enticing; this is one of the reasons that legalizing weed has not resulted in a big uptick in use. Make alcohol "not cool" and "not rebellious" and the binge drinking culture may decrease.
I think the article managed to skirt around another issue: gender expectations towards drinking. I know that at least the way I've learned about drinking, guys getting blackout drunk as a guy is far less acceptable than for gals. While not necessarily endearing for girls to get that drunk, when they say "Oh, I don't remember much after ______" it is just what it is. If she's a close friend, you might worry a bit about what did happen, but she isn't judged for getting that drunk. When I hear of a guy getting blackout drunk regularly, it just comes across that he can't handle his liquor. I don't know if this is how it is everywhere or if it's simply a result of my own exposure to drinking. There are definitely other aspects to gender in drinking, but I'm not sure how applicable they are to this issue in specific.
I find this look at blackouts very interesting - specifically someone being "in a blackout". I always looked at blackouts as something after-the-fact; you're conscious and cognisant while drinking in the night, and the next day you can't remember what happened. This presents a slightly different view - someone slides into the state of blackout while drunk, and consequently can't remember the next day. I mean, the distinction is mostly insignificant, but it has a different temporality. Certainly I'm no stranger to the haze of reconstructing the night before - exact words forgotten, the order of events re-arranged - but I haven't had a blackout in many years. There's a story of me in university that a mutual friend tells at every party; he allegedly encountered me in the street at morning time, with a traffic cone on either hand shouting "I am Conehand the Barbarian!". To this day I don't know if he's making it up or not.