National Minimum Drinking Age Act

National Minimum Drinking Age Act

The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 (23 U.S.C. ยง 158) was passed on July 17, 1984 by the United States Congress as a mechanism whereby all states would become thereafter required to legislate the age of 21 years as a minimum age for purchasing and publicly possessing alcoholic beverages. Under the Federal Aid Highway Act, a state with a minimum age below 21 would be subjected to a ten percent decrease in its annual federal highway apportionment.

While this act did not outlaw the consumption of alcoholic beverages by those under 21 years of age, seven states and Washington D.C. extended its provisions into an outright ban. These states are: Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. The minimum drinking age is a state law. However, most states still permit "underage" consumption of alcohol in some circumstances. In some states, no restriction on private consumption is made, while in others, consumption is only allowed in specific locations, in the presence of consenting and supervising family members as in the states of California, Colorado, Montana, New York, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. The act also does not seek to criminalize alcohol consumption during religious occasions; (e.g. communion wines, Kiddush).

Read more about National Minimum Drinking Age Act:  History, Opposition, Relevant Statistics, Application On College Campuses

Famous quotes containing the words national, minimum, drinking, age and/or act:

    This is the first national administration we’ve ever seen where the housewife couldn’t afford to buy groceries and the farmer couldn’t afford to grow them.
    Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)

    There are ... two minimum conditions necessary and sufficient for the existence of a legal system. On the one hand those rules of behavior which are valid according to the system’s ultimate criteria of validity must be generally obeyed, and on the other hand, its rules of recognition specifying the criteria of legal validity and its rules of change and adjudication must be effectively accepted as common public standards of official behavior by its officials.
    —H.L.A. (Herbert Lionel Adolphus)

    The rapturous, wild, and ineffable pleasure
    Of drinking at somebody else’s expense.
    Henry Sambrooke Leigh (1837–1883)

    This movie deals with the epidemic of the way we live now.
    What an inane cardplayer. And the age may support it.
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)

    The only ones who are really grateful for the war are the wild ducks, such a lot of them in the marshes of the Rhone and so peaceful ... because all the shot-guns have been taken away completely taken away and nobody can shoot with them nobody at all and the wild ducks are very content. They act as of they had never been shot at, never, it is so easy to form old habits again, so very easy.
    Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)