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 Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution declared it illegal to manufacture, transport, or sell intoxicating liquors. This was repealed with the passing of the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933, which was followed by the adoption of minimum legal drinking age policies in all states, with most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. 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 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 it's 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, 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. 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. Groups that oppose the 21 minimum include Choose Responsibility, the Amethyst Initiative, and Students for Sensible Drug Policy. Organizations that support upholding the 21 minimum age limit include Mothers Against Drunk Driving, American Medical Association, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the American Board of Pediatrics. 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. 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", though the perception of excessive drinking on college campuses is often overstated. ==Application on college campuses==

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. 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. 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 that actively instituted compliance checks, but 60% of these checks occurred without university involvement. One-fifth of surveyed schools were altogether unaware of the NIAAA's recommendations. 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. ==Effects==

The Institute of Medicine reviewed a large number of studies on the minimum legal drinking age, including peer-reviewed academic reviews, and largely viewed the policy as a success—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." In contrast, several studies, including a 2011 review, showed data that went against the idea that raising the drinking age to 21 actually saved lives in the long run. 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. 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. ==See also==