At what age should people be allowed to start drinking alcohol? The debate on this subject died out in the U.S. in the 1980s, but now it's back--partly because of the Iraq War. If you are 18 years old, you are entitled to elect the president, you can become a soldier and die for your country, but you cannot buy a drink until you are 21. Does that make sense?
When Prohibition ended in 1933, the "drinking age"--the age at which one could legally buy and possess alcohol in public--was set at 21 in most states. Between 1970 and 1975, during the second half of the Vietnam War, many states decided to lower it to 18, 19 or 20.
Then, in May 1980, Candy Lightner's 13-year-old daughter was killed by a drunk driver. Lightner started a national campaign called Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). Although the driver who killed Lightner's daughter was in his 40s, one result of the group's work was that all 50 states passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act in 1984, raising that age to 21. States can still set a lower drinking age, but at a price: they risk losing ten percent of the money the government gives them each year to build and service highways. So far, no state has changed its drinking age.