Consider chugging one for the Gipper this afternoon. Thirty-three years ago Monday, President Reagan yielded to peer pressure and, using the power of the federal purse-strings, forced the states to play the worst drinking game of all time.
With Mothers Against Drunk Driving cheering him on, Reagan signed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, challenging states to increase the drinking age to 21 or lose 10 percent of federal highway construction funds.
”We know that drinking, plus driving, spell death and disaster,” Reagan told a sober audience enduring the sweltering heat of Rose Garden ceremony in July. ”We know that people in the 18-to-20 age group are more likely to be in alcohol-related accidents than those in any other age group.”
Now, more than three decades later though, it’s worth evaluating the consequences of the conservative president’s most famous act of coercion. So has it worked? Maybe.
Afraid of losing funding, one-by-one the states began instituting the higher drinking age. Along with distinguished nation states like Kiribati and Oman, the United States is one of a dozen countries where those under 21 can’t buy a beer.
Cheering that fact, prohibitionists will toast Reagan. Mothers Against Drunk Driving, no doubt, will repeat the claim that 20,000 people are alive today because young adults can’t imbibe.
Others will attack that research as sloppy and complain that Reagan has been a cross-generational buzzkill. But the painful fact is that the youths aren’t dying as often because of drunk driving. They’re dying because they’ve been over drinking in their fraternities, dorm rooms, and house parties.
So tonight, opponents of the law will pour one out. They have reason to do so. Alcohol poisoning has increased exponentially, two-thirds of adults between 18 and 21 admit to binge drinking monthly, and deaths of despair among this demographic have tripled since Reagan.
Each of those statements is factually accurate, backed up by peer-reviewed studies produced by stuffy academics. But a double blind academic report isn’t necessary to realize that students are getting blitzed and going blind because of binge drinking.
Reliving the prohibition-era every weekend, college students minor in academics and major in beer every chance they get. Because alcohol is prohibited, kids are drinking as much as they can when its available. And away from more mature adult supervision, they do really, really stupid things like shots, like power hours, and like keg stands.
So love him or hate him, remember Reagan tonight. Aside from winning the Cold War, the conservative’s most lasting contribution could be making sure 18-year-olds can’t buy beer. They’re certainly drinking it though.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
