[Vision2020] Booze and Ballots

[Kenneth Marcy]

On Saturday 12 September 2009 05:45:03 Tom Hansen wrote:
> Rodna (my wife) attended UI back in '66/'67/'68, back when the drinking
> age was 18, the voting age was 21, cannabis was the recreational drug of
> choice, and UI's student body was right around 6,000.  You couldn't drink
> in the Borah Auditorium, but you could certainly light up (legal or
> otherwise).

I seem to remember that the minimum age for purchase of alcohol was 18 then, 
too, but, curiously, Wikipedia does not agree.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._history_of_alcohol_minimum_purchase_age_by_state 

Perhaps someone here with better access to research tools for Idaho legal 
history could clear up the discrepancies.

> College students used to have regular kegger parties out at the Spring
> Valley Reservoir.  UI made Playboy's "Top Party Schools" list regularly.
> Moscow cops usually met their DUI quota (if there was such a thing back
> then) by simply patrolling Highway 8 between Moscow and the Washington
> stae line at 2 in the morning.  Pullman cops generally exceeded their
> under-age DUI quota (again . . . if there was such a thing back then) by
> patrolling the same highway from the state line to Pullman at 2 in the
> morning.

Yes, the minimum age in Washington state has been 21 since 1934, just after 
Prohibition was repealed. The difference between Washington's 21 and Idaho's 
18, coupled with the states' border between Pullman and Moscow, was an 
economic boon for Moscow tavern owners for many years.

> Generally, the feds provided funds to state governments to maintain US
> highways within their state IF certain requirements were met.  One of
> these requirements was to raise the legal drinking age to 21.  For a
> number of years Idaho refused, but eventually joined in.

10 April 1987 was the Idaho effective date for minimum age 21 legal drinking. 
Additionally, since 1994 in Idaho, the minimum acceptable blood alcohol 
content for drivers under age 21 has been 0.02 percent, rather than the 0.08 
percent for those aged 21 and older. This is known as a "zero tolerance" law. 
(The percentage is not 0.00 to allow for test instrument errors.)

As far as the ballots part of the subject line is concerned, it is worth 
noting that, of those nations where alcohol consumption is legal, the United 
States has the highest legal minimum drinking age, 21 years. Most other 
nations set their minimum drinking age at 18, with a few with lower ages.

Considering America's continuing car crash carnage, even though alcohol 
related fatalities have dropped nearly half in the last quarter-century, it 
is still amazing that there are so many people who drink and drive. Given our 
technological competence in other areas, it's a sad commentary that we have 
not found ways, and required their use by persons who consume alcoholic 
beverages, to cause a vehicle to refuse to start under the control of someone 
too drunk to operate it safely, regardless of his or her age.


Ken