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Mothers Against Drunk Driving Essay

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December 18, 1917 the United States Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting the manufacturing, sales, and transportation of intoxicating liquors. March 21, 1947, the United States Congress debated again over the topic of alcohol. The result was the Twenty-first Amendment being passed. Alcohol was yet again allowed and freely sold within the borders of the United States of America (Constitution). No matter the harmful effects alcohol has always been a drug that is used, abused, and loved by countless Americans. Unfortunately, many American citizens that find comfort in alcoholic beverages are under the minimum legal drinking age of twenty-one. The United States of America, in order to protect the nation’s youth, needs to allow states …show more content…

The group was started by Candy Lightner of Fair Oaks, California. After her 13-year-old daughter was stuck by a drunk driver and killed as she was walking to a school carnival, Candy wanted to inform Americans of the many dangers of drunk driving (Minimum). Although the intentions of the members of Mothers Against Drunk Driving were in the right place, Congress did not enforce an appropriate law to address the issue. Mothers Against Drunk Driving was not started with the intentions of creating a new minimum legal drinking age. Instead of pushing for better education of alcohol for the nation’s youth, Congress passed a law in 1984 that withheld a portion of federal highway funds from any state that did not increase the legal drinking age to twenty-one (Richards). Although some states like Wyoming that tried to hold out from raising their minimum legal drinking age, by 1988 no state could maintain their roads without federal money and had to come to an agreement with the new national minimum legal drinking age. According to John M. McCardell Jr., states did not receive ten percent of their highway funds until the twenty-one minimum legal drinking age was enforced. This technically still gave each state the right to experiment with the legal drinking age, but no state has tried to change the minimum age because they cannot afford to sacrifice their roads without federal

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