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In 1984, Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which required states to raise their ages for purchase and public possession to 21 by October 1986 or lose 10% of their federal highway funds.
Minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) laws set the legal age when people can buy alcohol. The MLDA in the United States is 21 years. This means that alcohol cannot be sold to people younger than 21. Before the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, the MLDA could differ by state.
Most states established 21 as the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA). However, Illinois and Oklahoma set the MLDA at 21 for men and 18 for women in 1933. In 1976, the US Supreme Court ruled that the gender disparity violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment in Craig v.
In 1984, the National Minimum Legal Drinking Act, written by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and influenced by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), required all states to set their minimum purchasing age to 21. Any state that chooses not to comply with the act would have up to 10 percent of its federal highway funds withheld.
By 1988, all 50 states had raised their MLDA to 21. California (1933) and Oregon (1933) have the nation’s oldest MLDA 21 laws, while South Dakota (Apr. 1, 1988) and Wyoming (July 1, 1988) have the most recent MLDA 21 laws.
Why did Congress pass the national drinking age act? After Prohibition, nearly all states adopted a minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) of 21. Between 1970 and 1975, however, 29 states lowered the MLDA to 18, 19, or 20, largely in response to the change in the voting age.
The legal drinking age was set at 21 years of age because studies showed that the leading cause of death among people aged 1 to 34 accounted for one third of deaths due to unintentional injury from alcohol consumption.
The 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act, [23 U.S.C. § 158], requires that States prohibit persons under 21 years of age from purchasing or publicly possessing alcoholic beverages as a condition of receiving State highway funds.
1984-2014: National drinking age raised to 21: In response to the drunk driving epidemic of the 1970s, President Ronald Reagan passed the Minimum Drinking Age Act in July 1984, a law that...
From the end of Prohibition until 1984, drinking ages were determined by the states; many of them had the age at 21 while several lowered the age to 18 for the purchase of beer. This was changed due to the baby boom generation and the Vietnam War.