National Minimum Drinking Age Act

Legislation concerning the legal minimum drinking age in the United States can be traced back to the days of Prohibition. In 1920, the 18th amendment to the U.S. Constitution declared it illegal to manufacture, transport, or sell intoxicating liquors.[5] This was repealed with the passing of the 21st Amendment in 1933, which was followed by the adoption of minimum legal drinking age policies in all states, with most states electing a minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) of 21.[5] Between 1970 and 1975, 29 states lowered the MLDA from 21 to 18, 19, or 20. This was primarily due to the passing of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the required voting age from 21 to 18.[5]

During the 1960s, both Congress and the state legislatures came under increasing pressure to lower the minimum voting age from 21 to 18. This was in large part due to the Vietnam War, in which many young men who were ineligible to vote (or legally drink) were conscripted to fight in the war, thus lacking any means to influence the people sending them off to risk their lives. "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote," was a common slogan used by proponents of lowering the voting age. The slogan traced its roots to World War II, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt lowered the military draft age to 18. With the lowering of the voting age to 18, the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) was similarly lowered under the notion that by being able to vote (and for males, be subject to being involuntarily drafted into the enlisted ranks of the military), one should also be able to legally consume alcoholic beverages.

However, these changes were soon followed by studies showing an increase in motor vehicle fatalities attributable to the decreased MLDA. In response to these findings, many states raised the minimum legal drinking age to 19 (and sometimes to 20 or 21).[5] In 1984, the National Minimum Legal Drinking Act, written by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and influenced by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), required all states to enforce a minimum legal drinking age of 21 or else risk losing 10% of all federal highway construction funds.

As the MLDA was still left to the discretion of the state, the act did not violate the 21st amendment which reserved the right to regulate alcohol for all responsibilities not specifically appointed to the federal government to the states.[5] However, as the act controlled the distribution of anywhere from $8 million to $99 million, depending on the size of the state, the act gave a strong incentive for states to change the drinking age to 21.[5] By 1995, all 50 states, two permanently inhabited territories, and D.C. were in compliance, but Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands (and Guam until 2010) remained at 18 despite them losing 10% of federal highway funding.

Professor of law Tim Jost noted that the Roberts Court ruling in NFIB v. Sebelius, though upholding South Dakota v. Dole, had serious implications for future laws that incentivize state action.[6]

The Court expressly distinguished South Dakota v. Dole, the drinking age case, because only a small portion of highway funds were at risk. ... There will certainly be future litigation when other federal programs are changed and all of the funding for the existing program is at risk, however.

Constitutional lawyer Adam Winkler disagrees saying[7]

The health care decision on Medicaid is likely to be limited to its facts. ... Where a state's budget is truly dependent on federal dollars to survive, then conditional spending offers will be called into question. The health care decision doesn't purport to call into question any previous conditional spending law. And its not likely to have much impact because there's no clear majority opinion establishing new limits.

The Conservative Party of New York opposed the passage of the law in 1984. In 2001, according to the same article, New York State Assembly member Félix Ortiz introduced a bill that would lower the drinking age back to 18. He cited unfairness and difficulty with enforcement as his motivations.[8]

In 1998, the National Youth Rights Association was founded, in part, to seek to lower the drinking age back to 18. In 2004, the president of Vermont's Middlebury College, John McCardell, Jr. wrote in The New York Times that "the 21-year-old drinking age is bad social policy and terrible law" that has made the college drinking problem far worse.[9] Groups that oppose the 21 minimum include Choose Responsibility, the Amethyst Initiative, and Students for Sensible Drug Policy.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving supports the 21 law and has been the main opponent to lowering it back to 18. Several public and private universities in the country have also been a major supporter of the 21 law, plus various health organizations such as the American Medical Association.

A key cluster of philosophical opposition to the minimum lies in the natural human need for education and experience; young adults do not receive the opportunity to educate themselves and drink responsibly before the age of 21. A related line of thought emphasizes the importance of individual rights and freedoms.[5] Another cluster comes from pragmatism, emphasizing the reality that young people are unlikely to stop drinking, and point to statistics on underage drinking as a reason to institute a lower drinking age, which would provide the opportunity to help "young people learn to make healthy and responsible choices".[5]Social environmental theories are also cited; making alcohol a forbidden fruit may encourage more dangerous drinking than would occur if the drinking age were lowered.[10][11] With a lower drinking age, young people would have access to "publicly moderated drinking environments", rather than "model their behavior after the excessive consumption typical of private student parties",[12] though the perception of excessive drinking on college campuses is often overstated.[12]

When brewing magnate Pete Coors raised the drinking age as a campaign issue during the 2004 U.S. Senate race in Colorado, Republican leaders praised his stand on states' rights but distanced themselves from apparent self-interest.[13][14]

College campuses across the nation continue to struggle with issues of underage drinking, despite the nationwide MLDA of 21. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) took special interest in this issue, and compiled a list of recommendations for colleges to implement in order to combat underage drinking on campus. However, few schools have actually implemented these recommendations, and according to a recent study, most of the intervention programs currently in place on college campuses have proven ineffective. Underage drinking is nearly impossible to prevent on college campuses because access to alcoholic beverages is extremely easy.[15]

Though it is not the only factor that contributes to student drinking, liquor's contraband status seems to imbue it with mystique. As a result, use and abuse of liquor is seen as sophisticated and is expected.[16]

Of the colleges surveyed, 98% offered alcohol education programs to their students. Only 50% of surveyed colleges offered intervention programs, 33% coordinated efforts with the surrounding community to monitor illegal alcohol sales, 15% confirmed that surrounding establishments offered responsible beverage service training, and 7% restricted the number of alcohol outlets within the community. Special services for "problem drinkers" were available at 67% of the surveyed schools; 22% of the schools referred problem drinkers to off-campus resources, and 11% offered no intervention program whatsoever. 34% of the surveyed schools were located in communities which actively instituted compliance checks, but 60% of these checks occurred without university involvement. One fifth of surveyed schools were all together unaware of the NIAAA's recommendations.[15]

Many factors may explain colleges' failure to implement the NIAAA's recommendations to control underage drinking on campus: a lack of university funding, a lack of time, a perceived lack of authority or jurisdiction within the community, or even a lack of interest on the part of the university, many universities even see the program as a waste of resources. Whatever the reasons may be, a multitude of options are available should colleges choose to institute programs to decrease instances of underage drinking on campus. These options include, but are not limited to, alcohol education programs, social norms campaigns, substance-free housing, individual interventions, parental notification policies, disciplinary procedures for alcohol-related violations, and amnesty policies to protect the health and safety of students.[15]

Several studies, including a 2011 review, provided evidence against the idea that raising the drinking age to 21 actually saved lives in the long run.[17][18][19][20] For example, Miron and Tetelbaum (2009) found that when the federally coerced and non-coerced states were separated out, any lifesaving effect is no longer statistically or practically significant in the coerced states, and even in the voluntary-adopting states the effect does not seem to last beyond the first year or two. They also find that the 21 drinking age appears to have only a minor impact on teen drinking.[21] There is also some evidence that traffic deaths were merely shifted from the 18-20 age group to the 21-24 age group rather than averted.[22][23][20] Additionally, Canada, Australia, the UK, and several other nations saw similar or faster declines in traffic fatalities than the USA did since the early 1980s despite not raising their drinking ages to 21.[24] In contrast, the Institute of Medicine reviewed a large number of studies on the minimum legal drinking age, including peer-reviewed academic reviews,[25][26][27] and largely viewed the policy as a success[28]—so much so that they argued for similar restrictions on tobacco. For example, they quote a study by Kypri and colleagues stating that "No traffic safety policy, with the possible exception of motorcycle safety helmet laws, has more evidence for its effectiveness than do the minimum legal drinking age laws."[29]

• Carpenter, Christopher; Dobkin, Carlos (2011). "The Minimum Legal Drinking Age and Public Health". Journal of Economic Perspectives. 25 (2): 133–56. doi:10.1257/jep.25.2.133. PMC 3182479. PMID 21595328.
• MLDA-21 - dates enacted by state – U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
• State Profiles of Underage Drinking Laws – National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Alcohol Policy Information System (APIS)
• Stahl, Lesley (February 22, 2009). "Drinking Age Debate". 60 Minutes. CBS News.
• History of the Drinking Age in Washington, D.C.  – Ghosts of DC blog