3.2 Beer

"You don't drink, do you?" Grandma Eckman asked me during one of our conversations.

It was December 1983, and I was in my sophomore year at Wittenberg University, who had just turned 19, enjoying a 10-day Christmastime visit with my family.

Although it was afternoon, Grandma was in her nightgown and robe, but sitting in one of the very warm lounges of the senior residence where she had been living for over a decade. She was 86 years old.

I laughed—for a couple of reasons. First, as an independent student attending a private university, I could not afford to eat regularly. From the beginning of the quarter in September to my visit in December, I had lost more than 10 pounds, and I was thin to begin with. (I gained seven or so back during those 10 days of non-stop holiday eating.) If I didn’t have enough money to eat three meals a day, I definitely didn’t have enough money to purchase alcohol. Second, I was not a moocher. My pride and sense of reciprocity forbade me from drinking others’ alcohol without providing some of my own. Third, aside from a sip of beer or a cocktail when I was a child, I had really never acquired the taste of alcohol. And fourth, I was a little bit afraid of letting myself go in that manner.

“Nope,” I answered, “but I know why you asked.”

During the summer, Ohio had changed its minimum legal drinking age from 18 to 21. The previous Ohio law was that adults from 18 to 21 could drink 3.2% beer. Any higher percentage alcoholic beverage, such as wine, any of the hard liquors (whiskey, vodka, gin, rum, etc.) and even 7% alcohol beer was illegal until a person reached 21.

But the new law stated that any alcohol could not be legally purchased or consumed until a person became age 21.

“You know,” Grandma Eckman continued, “I know a little about alcohol laws myself.”

“Really?”

“I did live through Prohibition!” she said emphatically, almost as if she could not believe I didn’t know this. “It was a tough time for a lot of people, and even I liked a drink every now and then.”

I looked at her intently, to confirm that I was listening.

“All this regulation,” she concluded, “I just don’t like it.”

My great-grandmother was a grown woman when the 18^th Amendment was passed in 1919. For fourteen years, it crated derision, division and increased crime in the country. Then it was repealed in December 1933, via the 21^st Amendment.

During Prohibition, she was one of the many who continued to imbibe, even make her own, putting herself and her family at risk. She was very sensitive to laws regulating alcohol usage.

However, in more recent times, the country was experiencing some unpleasant changes, particularly as a result of response to the passage of the 26^th Amendment in July 1971. This Amendment lowered the legal voting age from 21 to 18. Between 1970 and 1975, 29 states also lowered the Minimum Legal Drinking Age (MLDA) from 21 to 18, 19 or 20. The nearly universal thought was that if a person was adult enough to vote at age 18, s/he was adult enough to manage alcohol usage.

Unfortunately, these changes were soon followed by studies showing an increase in motor vehicle fatalities, mostly attributable to the lower MLDA.

In 1980, Candy Lightner and Cindy Lamb began to speak out. Lightner founded MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) after her daughter Cari was killed by a repeat drunk driving offender. Lamb’s daughter Laura became the nation’s youngest quadriplegic at the hands of a drunk driver. The women’s goal was to save lives, and they pursued their objective by following the evidence.

MADD demanded state legislatures pass stricter drunk driving laws. In March 1983 Ohio passed its own stricter drunk driving law. However, those with grave concerns about youth drinking continued to push at the federal level. As drinking and driving laws are state laws, the federal government needed to be more creative about how to protect individuals from drinking and driving. In 1984, Senator Frank Lautenberg introduced the National Minimum Legal Drinking Act, which required all states to enforce a minimum legal drinking age of 21 or else risk losing 10% of all federal highway construction funds. This bill was quickly passed by both houses of Congress and signed by then-President Ronald Reagan on July 17, 1984.

As the act controlled the distribution of anywhere from $8 to $99 million in federal transportation funds, depending on the size of the state, for all intents and purposes the act mandated a minimum legal drinking age of 21. Over the next several years, the states became compliant. By mid-1988, all fifty states and Washington, DC were in compliance, with South Dakota and Wyoming as the final two states to comply.

But this was December 1983, and the Ohio law was already in effect.

“Well, Grandma,” I said, “I feel a kind of disappointment in the law. As you know, when I turned 18, I could drink three-two beer, and now to have that right taken away is disappointing. At the same time, I don’t drink any kind of alcohol, so it doesn’t officially affect me. It’s a weird sort of feeling.”

“Like betrayal?” she asked.

“More like sadness,” I answered, “and maybe not the way you’re thinking. Sadness in that some of my peers have behaved so foolishly that this has to be.”

Grandma Eckman looked at me, and I could see that her mind was considering what I just shared.

“It’s about responsibility,” I continued. “As much as I hate the idea of the government drawing up these kinds of parental-like laws, what else can it do when the people indicate so strongly that they need them?”

“Yeah, fine,” she snapped, signaling that this was the end of the conversation. I had worn her out. “Walk me back to my room,” she added more gently.  And, of course, I did.