Youth and the Drinking To-do

Remember that time in our lives when the drinking laws for young people between the ages of 18 and 21 were different from state to state? It's how it was until 1984 or 23 years ago when MLDA or minimum legal drinking age law was made effective thanks to the U.S. Senate, citizen advocacy groups, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving or MADD. Between 1976 and 1983 as many as 16 states increased the legal age from 18 to 20, up to 21.

In Connecticut, for many years the "bought over the state line" contraband was a true demon of catastrophe. There were instances of carloads of teens, some with more than one family member as passengers, local high school students and friends, who drove drunk on the way home from close-by states that hadn't enacted the age-21 drinking laws yet. Yes, it was real, obituaries in the paper and classmates at the funeral. Agreed, many are very mature at the age of 18, while others are out with mom or dad's car rolling along the highway in reverie about how many bottles of beer are left "on the wall." Here we are many years later realizing why we wear seat-belts. We've come a long way with the enactment of drunk driving laws and we can thank the early lawmakers and lobbyists who started with the underage issues. The sad part is we can't bring back the young drinking friend and two brothers who died in the same accident, or the classmate who was in the next row in secondary school. Those who have been to the modern-day bereavements unfortunately discover that just like so many years ago, some under age 21 are still grabbing the bottle and losing their lives to drunk driving accidents, the surviving relatives and friends still with the ache of a deceased loved one.