By Hon. Karen Arnold-Burger
“We can’t stop kids from drinking, so why don’t we just lower the drinking age back down to 18? They are adults for all other purposes. Eighteen year-olds can vote, smoke, marry, drive, fly, pay taxes, take out loans, hold public office, serve on a jury and fight for their country,, so what’s the big deal? Let’s stop spending all this tax money and law enforcement officer time fighting a loosing battle!”
I often hear this refrain as I speak to adults in our community. In fact, many Kansas parents today grew up in an era in Kansas when they could drink 3.2% beer when they were 18. Why did that change and should it be changed back? Some believe that allowing drinking at younger ages would mitigate youthful desire for alcohol as a “forbidden fruit.” Before I share my “top five” reasons we should keep the drinking age at 21, let’s take a little trip back in time and examine how the current law came to be.
After Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the decision as to what the legal drinking age should be was left up to each individual state. Until 1970, the minimum drinking age in most states was 21. As part of the war protests of the 1960’s, youth started lobbying for a lowered voting age and a lowered drinking age. “Old Enough to Fight…Old Enough to Vote” were popular bumper stickers and buttons of the era. In 1971, the 26th Amendment was adopted, lowering the voting age to 18 and drinking ages likewise started to be lowered around the country. Between 1970 and 1976, 21 states reduced the minimum drinking age to 18. Another 8 reduced it to 19 or 20. However, these states immediately noticed sharp increases in alcohol-related fatalities among teenagers and young adults. As a result, of the 29 states that had lowered their drinking age, 24 raised the age again between 1976 and 1984. By 1984, only three states allowed 18-year-olds to drink all types of alcoholic liquor. The others adopted some sort of stair-step age requirement based on the type of liquor being consumed.
Federal transportation authorities viewed this hodge-podge of state laws as a real highway traffic safety problem. Alcohol-related traffic injuries and fatalities were increasing and some of this was as a result of kids traveling from their home states to neighboring states that had lower drinking ages and then becoming injured or killed as they returned to their home states. These became known as “blood borders.” In 1984, Congress enacted the National Minimum Drinking Age Act which had been recommended by President Reagan’s Commission on Drunk Driving. States were threatened with the loss of 10% of their federal highway funds if they did not raise the minimum drinking age in their state to 21 for all alcoholic beverages. All states eventually complied so that now all 50 states have a minimum drinking age of 21. So, that brings us immediately to reason number one.
Regional Prevention Center 