In July 1971, Congress ratified the 26th Amendment, lowering the legal voting age to 18.
The move made a lot of sense given that 18-year-olds were subject to compulsory military service and, since 1965, many were being deployed into combat zones in Southeast Asia.
Then, riding the coattails of the new amendment, many states chose to lower their minimum drinking age, as well. Maine lowered the age to 20, while five states lowered it to 19, and ten to 18.
These changes led to a patchwork of drinking ages across the country, which became problematic as studies showed a rise in alcohol-related traffic incidents among America's youth.
During this time, the term "blood borders" emerged, describing situations where young people would cross state lines to legally purchase alcohol in states with lower minimum ages, often resulting in fatal accidents on their ill-fated drives back home.
That quite predictable increase in traffic-related fatalities led to massive lobbying efforts in support of re-establishing a national drinking age of 21. The most prominent of these, of course, was that of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, founded in 1980.
The collectively successful efforts culminated in Congress passing the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984.
Now, it's important to note that the legislation didn’t directly impose a nationwide legal drinking age of 21. Rather, it employed a “carrot-and-stick” approach which, in this case, was primarily a stick.
The law stipulated that states that didn’t raise their legal drinking age to 21 would face a reduction of 10% in their federal highway funds. This potential loss of federal funding was a significant threat to governors and their legislatures, as these funds were crucial for state infrastructure projects.
In June 1987, in a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the law, finding that the federal government could legally withhold a portion of federal highway funds from states that did not raise their drinking age to 21, as stipulated by the 1984 law.
The justices reasoned that the withholding of highway funds was a valid use of Congress's power to promote the "general welfare" and that the financial penalty was not so coercive as to violate states' rights under the Tenth Amendment.
In a larger sense, the court's decision supported the overall notion of the federal government's ability to influence state policies using conditional grants, a critical aspect of federal-state relations in areas such as health and public safety.
The federal strategy proved effective, with all states having complied with the law by the end of 1988. So, in other words, there were no longer any "sanctuary states" where kids could legally purchase alcohol before their 21st birthdays.
Wouldn’t it be neat if someone in Congress had the intellectual wherewithal and moral courage to resurrect the same sort of legislative technique when it comes to states and cities that have designated themselves as sanctuaries for illegal immigrants?
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