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From: rcj@burl.UUCP (Curtis Jackson)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Puritan Morality (legal drinking age)
Message-ID: <781@burl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 24-Jul-85 10:21:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: burl.781
Posted: Wed Jul 24 10:21:45 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Jul-85 07:43:29 EDT
References: <508@ttidcc.UUCP> <52700001@hpcnof.UUCP> <> <524@gargoyle.UUCP>
Reply-To: rcj@burl.UUCP (Curtis Jackson)
Organization: AT&T Technologies, Burlington NC
Lines: 38
Summary: 

In article <524@gargoyle.UUCP> carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) writes:
>>More of MIT: Massachusetts just raised the drink age to 21 and now only
>>about 23% of MIT students are legal. Despite the fact that the MIT
>>Campus Police have sole jurisdiction on campus, MIT has been going out
>>of it's way to enforce the drinking age. Nobody really knows why. This
>>seems to be vogue among colleges now -- following the drinking ages. 
>
>Perhaps one reason is that injuries, deaths, and property damage have
>been known to occur at on-campus parties, with alcohol apparently
>being a contributing factor, and the colleges/universities do not
>wish to be found liable.  Could any legal beagles tell us what the
>law says about this?  In any case, deans do not relish phoning
>parents at 1 a.m. to tell them their daughter is dead, as happened
>here a year or two ago when a freshman who had been drinking at a
>dorm party fell out of a fourth-story window (which was missing a
>screen) and landed on her head.
>
I'll give you an even better and much more American reason:  MONEY
The federal govt. has told the states that they WILL raise the
drinking age to 21 or they will lose their highway funds.  Yes, it's
those marvelous golden handcuffs at work again!!  Here in NC, the
state legislature raised the drinking age to 21 with a provision
written into the law that raised it saying in fairly plain English
that the moment the feds dropped the restriction on highway funds
the drinking age would revert back to 19 again.  They know what is
going on, don't like it, but can't do anything about it either.

To relate this back to the original article:  Just as with the 55 MPH
speed limit, enforcement is required by the feds or they start getting
angry and withholding the money they got from you in the first place.
Several of the western states had $5 or $10 tickets for < 70 or 75 MPH
for a long time after 55 MPH was enacted; until the govt. stepped in
and threatened to deny highway funds if the law was not 'truly enforced'.
-- 

The MAD Programmer -- 919-228-3313 (Cornet 291)
alias: Curtis Jackson	...![ ihnp4 ulysses cbosgd mgnetp ]!burl!rcj
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