Minimum drinking age or maximum parental protection?
by Michael Leaser
August 26, 2008
More than 100 college presidents want lawmakers to consider lowering the minimum drinking age to 18, citing current law as an excuse for furtive alcohol abuse on campus. Dubbed the Amethyst Initiative, this movement has sparked intense debate over the efficacy of such a measure, including the argument that it would put more pressure on high schools to deal with near-legal adolescent drinking. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), which has come out against this initiative, has compiled a set of statistics that includes data on the costs of underage drinking, as well as the significant influence parents have.
The latest Mapping America goes even further, examining federal survey data which show that one of the most effective extralegal deterrents to abusive youth drinking is married biological parents.
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By: Suricou Raven | August 27, 2008 at 5:02 am
Given that under-21s appear to have no difficulty at all in obtaining alcohol already, I expect lowering the age would be just a formality with no real legal impact.
I find it amusing how the federal government was able to pass a national minimum drinking age – court precident at the time said the fed has no authority there – drinking limits have no interstate impact, so it’s purely down to each state to decide on it’s own. So a well-intentioned congressman decided to simply screw the intent of the constitution and work around it: A law was passed saying that any state which didn’t pass a law banning sale of alcohol to anyone under 21 would lose all it’s highway funding. Congress extorted the states into doing what it lacked the power to do for itsself.
I recall a very similar trick was used to extort states into passing the common religious exception to child-protection laws.
Since then, courts have expanded the power of the federal government considerably as a result of the War on Drugs – a lot of hard campaigning, legal trickery and sheer determination by anti-drugs campaigners concerned that states might decide to legalise various prohibited substances and so any such effort must be preempted by making sure the federal government has the ability to overrule them.