The argument over the consumption of alcohol and its legality has endured for over two centuries in the United States. Since the country’s infancy, a heavy drinking culture has prevailed, however, there have been attempts to quell the consumption of alcohol – and some of these movements have succeeded. The Temperance Movement, which gained traction during the first half of the nineteenth century, succeeded in 1919 at the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment of the Constitution. While the amendment was repealed by 1933, the movement to curb the consumption of alcohol among young Americans has continued since Prohibition.

Temperance poster promoting the prohibition of alcohol circa 1912 (Creative Commons)

In the decades after the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment and the reintroduction of legal drinking in the United States, Americans have debated the age at which young citizens should be able to legally purchase and consume alcohol. The law has been federally mandated, as well as legislated by the states in the past decades. On either side of the debate to lower or raise the drinking age, the arguments focus on the moral, health and social consequences of the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) law in the United States.