Consider chugging one for the Gipper this afternoon. Thirty-three years ago Monday (6/17), President Reagan yielded to peer pressure and, using the power of the federal purse-strings, forced the states to play the worst drinking game of all time.
With Mothers Against Drunk Driving cheering him on, Reagan signed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, challenging states to increase the drinking age to 21 or lose 10% of federal highway construction funds.
”We know that drinking, plus driving, spell death and disaster,” Reagan told a sober audience enduring the sweltering heat of Rose Garden ceremony in July. ”We know that people in the 18-to-20 age group are more likely to be in alcohol-related accidents than those in any other age group.”
Now, more than three decades later though, it’s worth evaluating the consequences of the conservative president’s most famous act of coercion. So has it worked? Maybe, writes Philip Wegmann in the Washington Examiner. Read more here.