HISTORICAL CONTEXT

In response to motivations for maintaining human perfectionism in the early 1800s, movements of local and state alcohol prohibitions occurred. This led to the Temperance Movement during the late 1800s and early 1900s, as believers encouraged drinking in moderation or even maintaining complete abstinence from alcohol.

The prohibition of alcohol lasted from 1920 to 1933. It outlawed the manufacturing, transportation, and selling of alcohol under the 18th Amendment. It was later repealed on a federal level under the 21st Amendment. The 21st Amendment gave states control regarding their own alcoholic laws.

Following the repeal of the Prohibition, many states lowered their drinking age to 18 during the 1960s. According to the Cleveland State Law Review in 1984, “The House Committee on Energy and Commerce drafted the Drinking Age Act in response to the recognition that having differing state minimum drinking ages created an "interstate problem." This lack of uniformity laws provides teenagers with an incentive to drink and drive in search of a lower drinking age. The result of having approximately one-half of the states without a twenty-one minimum is a "crazy quilt of different States' drinking laws and far too many blood borders where teens drive across to reach states with lower drinking ages." (Kadlec, 1986). Thus, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 was established to collectively raise the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) among all states to 21.