Wild West fights to keep drinking age below 21

Press, 22 October 1986, Page 20

Wild West fights to keep drinking age below 21

From an “Economist” correspondent in Casper, Wyoming

The Rocky Mountain West is an independent place, and its latest piece of stubbornness is a refusal to bow to Washington’s demand for a ban on sales of drink to those under 21. The fight began in 1984, when Congress. gave the Federal Government the right to withhold 5 per cent of Federal highway money for fiscal 1987 from states which refused to raise their drinking age. In fiscal 1988 the proportion will rise to 10 per cent, and so on in every subsequent year that the states refuse to obey. The bill was drafted to cut down road deaths involving drinking among 18 20-year-olds. When President Reagan signed it, saying he had “no misgivings about this judicious use of Federal power,” 27 states allowed people under 21 to buy alcohol in some form. Most states fell into line quickly, and so far 41 have complied with the law. A big redoubt remains in cowboy country: Colorado, Wyoming, Mon-

tana, Idaho, and South Dakota. South Dakota filed a law-suit in 1984 against the Transport Secretary, Mrs Elizabeth Dole, arguing that the twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution (the one repealing Prohibition) guaranteed the states’ right to control intoxicating liquor. The suit was dismissed; the state appealed, and lost again last May. Now Wyoming, in conjunction with five other states, is filing a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of South Dakota. The Supreme Court will decide in about six weeks whether to consider the case. Louisiana, Ohio, and Tennessee are also holding out. With some of them, the Federal Government has been stern. Ohio’s decision to continue to allow 19-year-olds to drink beer with an alcohol content of 3.2 per cent, but nothing stronger, will cost it $2O million in fiscal 1987. Tennessee, which has a 21-year-old drinking age for most of its citizens, is being denied about

$lO million in highway money because it allows military personnel under 21 to drink off base; they do not, after all, have • to be 21 to die for their country. State legislators in Ohio are wary of raising the drinking age; a 1983 referendum rejected the idea by two to one. A 21-year-old drinking age did not go down easily either in Wisconsin, which has more taverns per throat than any other state. The issue forced a special session of the state legislature last June and, for the first time in 140 years in Wisconsin, two conference committees had to be called. A grace period is given to those states which come round to the Federal Government’s way of thinking at the last minute. States with no 21-year-old drinking law can have their highway money refunded if they raise their drinking age by September 30, 1988. The West seems prepared to argue it out all the way down the line. Copyright — the “Economist”