ALCOHOL Laws present a unique paradox within the United States and the University community: While there is a legal drinking age of 21, generally there seems to be an understanding allowing many people ages 18 to 21 to slip by the law should they want to, especially when in a college setting. Why this paradox? Well, mostly it is due to the key influence of a small but very vocal interest group with an entirely different reported goal. This influence can and should be reversed as it defrauds not only state governments, but every citizen ages 18 to 21.
Despite what some groups would have you believe, there has been no moral mandate throughout U.S. history abhorring drinking. It was not until after Prohibition that Virginia's first ABC act declared a "legal age for purchase, possession or consumption of any alcoholic beverage." Though Virginia decided to set the age at 21, control of it was entirely up to the state government, not the federal government, and in 1974 Virginia lowered the legal age for beer to 18. It was only in 1987 that it returned to 21.
There is an overwhelming difference between Prohibition and the 1934 act and the 1987 law, however. In 1987 it was not a huge national movement but instead a small interest group known as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD, that effectively forced state governments into complying with their temperance agenda through a purported attack on drunk driving.
Many would be surprised to learn that nowhere in federal legislation is there a mandatory national drinking age. After the end of Prohibition, this power was turned over to the states. Instead, "the actual bill required 'all States to raise their minimum drinking age to 21 within 2 years or lose a portion of their Federal-aid highway funds,'" according to Alex Koroknay's book "Legislative Analysis for the National Minimum Drinking Age Act." If states do not comply and raise the drinking age for beer to 21, they lose federal highway funds. Ronald Reagan himself is quoted in the book saying that "the provisions that punished states that didn't comply were an infringement upon states' rights."
In addition, it seems the apparent goals and motives for this have been greatly distorted. In a very well-organized publicity campaign at a time when drunk driving accidents were at the forefront of national attention, MADD was able to raise the minimum drinking age by pushing through a law that effectively forced states to comply. This is interesting given that their supposed goal was to end drunk driving, not promote temperance.
To do this, MADD used highly questionable and very carefully selected statistics to draw in the national media, Congress and to some degree the American people. To use one of Koroknay's examples, a MADD report stated that "five thousand of those killed on our highways each year are teenagers -- a fifth of all auto fatalities" and that "43 percent of those were legally intoxicated." These two statements say very different things. They say that 43 percent of 5,000 underage people killed in highway accidents were intoxicated, i.e. about 2,150.
Yet, they imply that the one-fifth of underage people die in car wrecks die due to drinking. In fact, 2,150 is only about eight percent of 25,000 total highway deaths, and includes all teenagers as well as those riding with other people. Nowhere did MADD make an effective argument that there are underage drivers who are intoxicated and causing accidents. Instead, they used carefully-controlled wording and grey areas to imply something that does not exist.
Mother Against Drunk Driving is, in its stated goals, an organization devoted to stopping drunk driving. However, the effects of their efforts are very much to the contrary and have greatly misled the public. Instead of ending drunk driving, raising the legal drinking age for beer has forced underage drinking underground where young people are unsupervised and more likely to take additional risks -- such as driving while intoxicated.
More importantly, the methods of forcing this law are entirely immoral. The federal government should not have the right to blackmail states into submission because it does not like a popular mandate that gave states control over their own alcohol laws. Finally, there is the simple moral question: How can close to 20 million people ages 18 to 21 be trusted to vote, but not be old enough to make their own decisions about drinking?
Allan Cruickshanks' column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at acruickshanks@cavalierdaily.com
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