10-07-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Don't Drop the Drinking Age
Scott Johnston's op-ed 'The Key to the Young Male Vote: Beer' (June 25) is dangerously dismissive of one of our nation's most consequential public-health achievements: the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, signed by President Reagan and later upheld by the Supreme Court.
While it's true that advocacy and tougher law enforcement have helped decrease drunk-driving deaths, decades of peer-reviewed research attribute a significant share of the decline in alcohol-related crashes to the 21 minimum legal drinking age. To dismiss that evidence simply because underage drinking still occurs is like questioning the value of speed limits or seatbelts because people sometimes break the rules. Imperfect compliance doesn't negate the law's effect.
