WASHINGTON - A college freshman drinks a beer. It is a common scene, but an illegal one: the National Minimum Drinking Age Act - which withholds federal highway funds from states that do not set their legal drinking age at 21 - turns 20 today.
By some measures, not much has changed in the past 20 years. Teenagers, college students in particular, still have easy access to alcohol.
"There is this very deeply entrenched, 150-year-old tradition of students having a beer and enjoying themselves," says University of Wisconsin folklore professor James P. Leary, who specializes in bar and tavern tales. "It's irradicable."
Accepted limit
But eliminate the national drinking age? The ears of many teens might perk up, but most lawmakers hoping to win elections run for cover.
In the two decades since the National Minimum Drinking Age Act went into effect, preventing anyone under 21 from buying or possessing alcohol has become accepted in mainstream society and government.
A rare exception, Colorado Republican Senate candidate Peter Coors - as in the brewery - made national news last month when he publicly opposed the nationwide drinking age.
Advocates of the 21-year-old minimum - a formidable group that includes lawmakers from both sides of the aisle and the influential organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving - say the widespread support they enjoy is borne out by statistics showing the dangers of teen alcohol consumption and the havoc wreaked by drunken drivers.
"Twenty-one was a great victory for MADD and for the nation," says MADD President Wendy Hamilton.
Hamilton has a tragedy motivating her work. Her sister and her sister's child were killed by a drunken driver in 1984. For her, numbers such as a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimate that 20,000 more people would have died in car wrecks in the past 20 years were it not for the higher drinking age have extra significance.
Rights and recognition
But another category of deaths has a bearing on the act's opponents: With the number of teenagers being killed in Iraq growing every week, some young adults view drinking age as an issue of rights and recognition.
"It's just a matter of justice," says Alex Koroknay-Palicz, executive director of the National Youth Rights Association. He has long been an advocate of lowering the drinking age, but he said the topic has a new immediacy. "We have individuals who are going to war, who are 18, 19, 20, and they can't drink a beer."
