gam@proper.UUCP (Gordon Moffett) (06/30/84)
So I see the US Senate has approved a bill that would punish
states with under-21 drinking ages and reward those with at-21
drinking ages "... in the interests of highway safety."
If a state has an under-21 drinking age limit, the Feds can
withhold ~10% highway funds for that state, and so on.
Well I'm sure that those few Senators who opposed it claiming
state's rights are being violated are being quietly or otherwise
accused of taking kickbacks from Seagram's or whoever, but I
agree with them. I am very much interested in seeing stricter
laws regarding drunk driving and raising the drinking age to
21, but not at the expense of the states right to regulate themselves.
One of the few good things about Reagan was his insistence on
decentralization of power and giving states more local control;
will he fudge on this, too? Well it is an election year and
this sort of issue (drunk driving) is really popular ...
(and isn't withholding the highway funds going to make the
highways that much less safe anyway? Politics is truly weird).
--
Gordon A. Moffett
{ hplabs!nsc, decvax!sun!amd, ihnp4!dual } !proper!gamjsgray@watmath.UUCP (Jan Gray) (07/04/84)
Rather than raise the drinking age to 21 years to remove "blood borders", why not lower it to 18? Other cutting off points to consider are 0 and 200 years. I'm fed up with stupid rules which put people into categories. An abstainer for life, Jan Gray (jsgray@watmath.UUCP) University of Waterloo (519) 885-1211 x3870