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Last week, some of you may have seen my appearance on ABC's
"Politically Incorrect." I had a wonderful time and I
thank everyone who watched. If you missed it, the topics of
discussion were sex, drugs, and alcohol... or bestiality,
marijuana and Jenna Bush.
It seems that the President's daughter's name has become
synonymous with alcohol--or more specifically, underage
drinking. Jenna is 19 years old--old enough to drive a car,
smoke a cigar, choose a President (I wonder if she voted for her
dad?), go to war, abort an innocent infant, buy a house, get
married, sign a legal and binding contract, or do pretty much
anything else her little party-girl heart desires. In fact,
there are only four things that Jenna can't legally do based
solely on her age: run for Congress, run for Senate, run against
her dad for President, and drink a cool, refreshing beer from an
ice-cold, frosty mug--a near-necessity in Austin, Texas, where
Jenna lives and where the average summer conditions are
typically 106 degrees with 100% humidity.
I feel a special empathy for Jenna. You see, I am also
subject to the ridiculous liquor laws of this nation, which are
blatantly unconstitutional and create an entire second-class
citizenship of American adults. I am eight months shy of my
twenty-first birthday. Any frequent reader of this column should
know that age is not a factor in intelligence or maturity--just
take a look at the behavior of the entire Clinton
Administration, all of whom, I can assure you, were old enough
to drink.
Like Jenna, I enjoy drinking. Luckily, I am not the president’s
daughter and I don’t live in a ‘college town.’ If I want
to have a glass of wine with dinner, I simply order it and the
waiter brings it to me without asking questions. I believe this
happens everywhere, for the most part (unless your father
happens to be President and the waiter doesn’t like his
politics).
My biggest problem with the drinking age is, of course, its
unconstitutionality. Until 1984, it was up to the states to
decide what their drinking laws would be. The tenth amendment
states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by
the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved
to the states respectively, or to the people [emphasis
added]."
If the federal government took even a cursory glance at the
tenth amendment, they would know that the National Minimum
Drinking Age law flies in the face of that amendment. When the
law was passed in 1984 (a very appropriate year to pass such an
act), many states had minimum drinking ages of 18. A drinking
age of 18 makes sense, but it is frankly no concern of the
federal government’s if a state has a minimum drinking age of
six and a half--it is the state’s right to decide such things,
according to the U.S. Constitution on which our nation was
founded.
In 1984, thirty states had legal drinking ages of 18. The
National Minimum Drinking Age Act declared that each and every
state had to raise their individual minimum drinking age to 21
or lose ten percent of their federal highway funding. That’s
right, the law is enforced by blackmail.
The other problem with this law is that it creates an
environment of age discrimination. For the two years I have
lived in Washington, I have been missing out on a key part of
D.C. culture--Georgetown.
The area around Georgetown University is peppered with great
shopping and expensive eateries. After 9pm, these eateries
become hot spots for the young professional crowd, with dancing
and DJs and tons of attractive people spilling in and out of one
restaurant after another.
Now, imagine if these establishments had signs saying,
"No Blacks Admitted after 9pm," or, "No Women
Admitted after 9pm." There would be an uprising! Jesse
Jackson would show up and bellow about the injustice!
Patricia Ireland would rail about the ‘violent oppression.’
But in effect, that is exactly what these places are doing.
Because of the close proximity to the University (where half the
population is between 18 and 20), signs hang outside the doors
of Georgetown restaurants that say "No One Under 21
Admitted After 9pm." Huge bouncers stand at the entrances,
enforcing this discrimination. If you ‘look’ a certain way
(in this case, young), you are forced to produce identification.
(Show me your papers, please.)
There is no rational excuse for this kind of discrimination.
When the law was passed, it was passed because of the hysteria
of women like Candy Lightner, founder of Mothers Against Drunk
Driving (MADD). Because her precious little one had been killed
by a drunk driver, she started a nationwide crusade against
drinking. I have no end of sympathy for this woman’s loss, but
to toss out the Constitution and restrict the rights of an
entire class of American adults in the name of revenge is simply
reprehensible.
Lightner and other defenders of the age 21 minimum say these
laws are necessary because 18-20 year olds cause more
alcohol-related fatal traffic accidents than any other group. In
truth, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration (NHTSA), 41.9% of all fatal traffic accidents in
the 18-20 age group involved alcohol. The same statistic for the
entire population? 41.3%.
The fact is, the National Minimum Drinking Age is an affront
to the Constitution and a monument to age discrimination. It was
passed because it was politically popular at the time--the
21-drinking age cause was to soccer moms in 1984 what the
Million-Mom March is to the same group in 2024. This law is mass
hysteria run amok, and it must be stopped, for the sake of our
freedom.
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