About the Legal Drinking Age

Intended to curb abuse by young people with limited judgment, legal drinking age laws have varied throughout time and by geography. Until the early 1900s few countries had uniform laws about the minimum age required to purchase or consume alcohol. In the United States, minimum legal drinking ages began to be instituted more widely after Prohibition. Even more than 20 years after a national law encouraged all 50 United States to adopt a minimum drinking age of 21, a debate about lowering this limit crops up every few years.

Geography

The legal drinking age varies greatly worldwide. Some countries have no minimum drinking age, while India's is the highest, at 25. In the United States, the legal drinking age is 21. In Canada, it's 19.

Misconceptions

The term "legal drinking age" is somewhat misleading. The laws usually pertain to how old a person has to be to purchase alcohol, not when he can consume it. Many countries have no set age for when a minor can drink alcohol in a private setting, such as having a glass of wine at dinner with parents. This is also true for many states in the U.S. Some states have laws about the minimum age for drinking, but most minimum age laws have to do with the sale and purchase of alcohol.

History

In the United States before Prohibition, almost none of the states had laws about minimum age for purchase or consumption of alcohol. By the early 1930s, a few states had such laws, with the minimum age usually being set at 18 or 21. By the 1970s, the majority of American states had minimum purchase ages ranging from 18 to 21. In 1984, a federal law, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, mandated that national funds would be withheld from states that did not set the minimum drinking age at 21. Most states complied almost immediately, though there were a few holdouts. Some states--such as Colorado, Montana and Iowa-- didn' t raise the drinking age to 21 until two to three years later.

Significance

Minimum drinking age laws are meant to restrict minors' access to alcoholic beverages. Part of the rationale for passing the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 was that it was expected to curb teenage drinking and therefore traffic accidents and fatalities involving underage drinkers. The idea was to prohibit 18-year-old high school seniors from purchasing alcohol and sharing it with their younger classmates. Critics of the legal drinking age being set at 21 argue that if a person is old enough to vote and join the military at age 18, then she should also be allowed to purchase alcohol.

Effects

Though minors can still get access to alcohol illegally, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration believes that setting the minimum drinking age at 21 has reduced alcohol-related traffic fatalities in the 18-to-20 age range since 1984 by at least a few percentage points. An unintended effect of raising the minimum drinking age in the United States, though, is that teenagers in states that border Canada will occasionally drive to nearby provinces to take advantage of the lower drinking age of 19 in bars and liquor stores there.

Resources

• A list of legal drinking ages around the world