Pros And Cons Of Keeping The Drinking Age

In this article there are two sides to the debate of whether or not the states should be able to set their own drinking age. The pro side, represented by John McCardell says that if eighteen year olds are capable of being drafted for a war, they should be able to legally drink as well. The con side James C. Fell says that a lower drinking ages hel a higher risk of suicide and homicide, and thus keeping the drinking age at twenty one would be preventing nearly twelve hundred suicides and homicides combined. Things cannot always be easy, and this debate that the article focuses on is no exception. Throughout the history of America there have always been disputes of just how much power the federal government should be able to wield, and how much they should be able to limit the state's power. They effectively “bought” the states through grant-in-aid programs, which is basically a program where the government gives the states money with specific and clear ways to spend. One of the best examples would be the federal highway grant, which was passed in 1956. It offered the states ninety cents for every dollar spent of the interstate highway system.

Congress passed an act that would adequately punish the states who had their legal drinking age under that of twenty one. It was called the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, and its premise was that if any state decided to keep an age below twenty one they would lose ten percent of their annual federal highway grants. That’s millions of dollars that they would be essentially throwing away every year, and of course this act was not a law and did not force the states to do anything, but the ramifications of not doing as the act asked were