The Minimum Drinking Age: What Price Freedom?

By Christian Schneider

Around Wisconsin, college campuses are bustling with new, hopeful students about to start the best years of their lives.  While people tend to put a lot of importance on speeches given to college graduates,  I would rather address students who are just entering college...

Dear freshmen:

Congratulations on breaking free from the cozy home life to which you have become accustomed.  As a student, you are given a lot of immediate and important responsibilities.  You will be expected to learn complicated theories and scientific formulas, so that you one day will go on and better our state’s culture and economy.  You will be urged to become politically involved – incoming students are usually old enough to vote for elected officials that shape the lives of everyone at a local and state level.

As a new student, you are trusted to conduct yourself as an adult.  You’re expected to take precautions to make sure you don’t get pregnant, but support systems exist to help you parent if you do.  If you want to get married, you can also legally do so.  To the chagrin of many, you are also free to buy and possess a firearm.

In fact, among all your important new adult responsibilities, there's only one thing so fundamentally appalling that the state won't trust you to do it responsibly:

Have a beer.

That's right - you can legally own a shotgun, but can't shotgun a Pabst Blue Ribbon.

The story of how Wisconsin came to enact the 21-year old minimum drinking age is well-traveled territory.  In 1984, Congress enacted the National Minimum Drinking Age (NMDA), which threatened to withhold federal highway funds from states which didn’t comply with the 21-year old mandate.  Under the new law, Wisconsin would have lost $7 million in highway funds in 1987 and $14 million in 1988.  On September 1, 1986, the new minimum drinking age of 21 became law in Wisconsin (it had previously been 19).

Naturally, in blackmailing the states, Congress forced compliance using the one thing state legislators understand: money.  You can bet that if the federal government threatened to withhold a hundred bucks from Wisconsin unless they mandated men wear bow ties, our state would look like a Pee Wee Herman convention within months.

Opponents of the new law argued that the NMDA was overbroad, in that it linked the broad issue of minimum drinking ages to the more narrow issue of underage drunk driving.  At the time of the new law, the Council of State Governments conducted a study that showed more than 99% of licensed drivers aged 19–20 had never been involved in an alcohol-related accident and only 0.6% were responsible for drunk-driving accidents. Furthermore, they con­cluded that 18- to 20-year-olds were less likely than drivers in the 21–25 or 45–54 age groups to be involved in an alcohol-related accident.

The NMDA was challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1987 South Dakota v. Dole case.  While the federal government’s tactic of using funding to threaten compliance with mandates was upheld, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor articulated the case against the law in her dissent.  She said:

  . . . [I]f the purpose of Section 158 is to deter drunken driving, it is far too over and under-inclusive. It is over-inclusive because it stops teenagers from drinking even when they are not about to drive on interstate highways. It is under-inclusive because teenagers pose only a small part of the drunken driving problem in this Nation.

Naturally, the new law didn’t actually keep underage youths from drinking.  It only made sure that when they did get their hands on alcohol, they had to drink a lot of it, since the chance may not come up again soon.  Numerous studies have shown that binge drinking among underage drinkers has either remained the same or increased following enactment of the NMDA. 

Even parents, who understand the value of teaching their kids to drink responsibly, don’t fully buy the 21-year old standard.  In a survey conducted by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction following enactment of the higher drinking age, 72% of parents said they had allowed or would allow their children to drink under the age of 21.  (In high school, my parents once asked me if I wanted to have a glass of wine with them.  I immediately dialed “911” to report that my folks had been abducted and replaced with cool people.)

Of course, lowering the drinking age now would still cost the state 5% of their federal transportation money in the first year, and 10% for each year after that.  According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the state receives $623 million per year in federal aid.  That would equate to roughly a $31.5 million hit the first year, and $63 million per year thereafter.

The question then becomes: what price are we willing to pay to avoid subjecting ourselves to blackmail?  How much is it worth to Wisconsin to maintain the spirit of federalism, in which the states serve as the laboratories of democracy?

Wisconsin can maintain its vigilance against underage drunk driving by retaining an absolute sobriety standard for drivers under 21 years old.  However, we should allow adults 19-years old and up to pay a fee to attend classes on responsible alcohol use.  Once completed, those 19 and 20-year olds would get a license that allowed them to purchase and consume alcohol legally in Wisconsin.  The loss in federal revenue would be offset by the fees paid by the registrants.  (If you can get 30,000 students to pay $50 to see the Dave Matthews Band, you can get ten times that number to buy an alcohol consumption license.)  Furthermore, the new license would mitigate the problem of border-hoppers from Illinois and Minnesota looking to purchase alcohol in Wisconsin.

As a new student, you are expected to use your judgment to become an adult.  Yet because of the specious relationship between drunk driving and underage drinking, you aren’t trusted to legally do what you’re likely going to do anyway.  19 and 20-year old adults who we trust with so many other important responsibilities deserve much better from their government.

For a follow-up with more information on the "plan," visit the WPRI Blog.

Note:  A complete history of minimum age drinking laws in Wisconsin can be found at the Legislative Reference Bureau website.