This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, March 13th, 2009. I'm Caleb Brown. Setting a national

drinking age definitely conflicts with federalism, but does it even work to reduce highway fatalities?

Jeffrey Myron, a senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University, says the evidence bears

closer scrutiny.

His article on minimum drinking ages is in the forthcoming issue

of Regulation magazine.

Regulation and drinking ages started in the early 1930s after alcohol prohibition had been repealed.

There was of course not really anything before then because we did not simultaneously

have legal alcohol and any widespread use of cars until the early 30s. So states at that point mainly adopted minimum

legal drinking ages, some were 21, some were 20, some many were 18, and that

situation persisted with those laws for about 30 years or so. In the mid-60s or late

60s a number reduced their legal drinking ages to 18 from 21 where a number had

been and then that lasted without much change at all

until the mid 1980s in the mid 1980s there was an act of Congress signed by

Ronald Reagan that said states could not get their federal

highway funds from the federal government unless they raised their minimal legal

drinking age from 18 to 21 and there was a Supreme Court case about it. Court ruled that the law was

constitutional. So within about three years, every state had raised a

streaking age from 18 to 21 if it was not already at the 21 level.

Now there are several studies out there that say that these minimum drinking ages or setting the minimum drinking age to 21 has yielded some

benefits in terms of lowering highway fatalities for young people and you think

that they're missing something in the way in which they

...