Between and , nearly half the states dropped the drinking age to 18, 19, and By , all the states had adopted the age minimum. The United States has one of the highest minimum legal drinking ages in the world. In addition, the "blood borders" between states with different MLDAs caught public attention after highly-publicized crashes in which youth below the legal drinking age would drive to an adjoining state with a lower MLDA, drink legally, and crash on their way home.
Advocacy groups urged states to raise their MLDA to Several did so in the late s and early s, but others did not. Privacy Policy. Why 21? Why do we make young people wait until 21 to drink alcohol? References 4. Read more 6. Read more 9. Read more References 3. Would lowering the legal drinking age make alcohol less of a big deal, and less attractive to teens? Some people propose a hour alcohol education course for teens that would entitle teens to drink before That answers the legal question of why the drinking age is 21, but what was the underlying logic of the original policy?
Did lawmakers just pick 21 out of a hat because they wanted college seniors to learn the nuances of bar culture before graduation? Not quite. The concept that a person becomes a full adult at age 21 dates back centuries in English common law; 21 was the age at which a person could, among other things, vote and become a knight. Since a person was an official adult at age 21, it seemed to make sense that they could drink then, too. Believe it or not, Franklin Roosevelt helped prompt the change in a rather circuitous fashion.
When the Vietnam-era draft rolled around, though, people were understandably a bit peeved that year-old men were mature enough to fight, but not old enough to vote. Thus, in the states ratified the 26th Amendment , which lowered the voting age to Legislators started applying the same logic to drinking.
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