Underage Drinking Policy

Most of the policies dealing with alcohol are not to prevent alcohol addiction, but are to prevent underage drinking and to create safer roads. These policies are enforced with a combination of local, state and federal laws (Source 3). The laws are not directly dealing with roads, but the laws do create safer roads in the end. The federal, state and local governments have control over the manufacturing of alcohol, deciding who can drink it, deciding who can sell it and the responses to alcohol related problems (source 3). The policies that effect most people are the policies from the state and federal government. State and federal policies about alcohol tend to be separate, but there some that overlap. The policy with the most power that
overlaps state and federal power is the National Minimum Drinking Age Act. This policy was put into place on July 17, 1984 by President Ronald Reagan in response to the drunk driving epidemic of the 1970’s. The policy required states to raise the legal drinking age to twenty-one and if they didn’t they would get ten percent of their federal highway fund cut (source 4). This policy further helps put in place other policies dealing with underage drinking. A state policy that deals with underage drinking is “laws that prohibit underage alcohol possession, consumption or internal possession; together with various statutory exceptions to the laws” (source 1).
It is normal for most states to prohibit minors from purchasing and consuming alcohol, but the line between legal and illegal gets blurry when states have exceptions. Some states allow consumption by minors in the presence of family or spouses (source 1). Another exception is that some states allow minors to purchase alcohol to help law enforcement check merchant compliance; even though; normally it is a double offense if a minor purchases alcohol because they can be charged for both purchasing and possessing alcohol (source 1). These exceptions can be made because the states are given the power under the 21st amendment (source
3).
Another state level policy are the licenses required for purchasing and distributing alcohol.
In Pennsylvania, there are six potential license. Some of these licenses include C, CC, D, and R. The C license stands for a club license and the CC license stands for a group club which can host weddings. With both, sales of alcohol start at seven in the morning and must end at three in the morning. All unfinished alcohol must be collected and everyone must leave by three thirty (source 2). A D license are for beer distributors only and the consumption of this beer must be off the premises (source 2). Finally, the R license is for restaurant food services and gives them the right to sell liquor wine and beer products. If a restaurant with tis license doesn’t also have a Sunday Sales Permit, then they can only sell alcohol starting at one in the afternoon on Super Bowl Sunday and St. Patrick’s Day (source 2). These licenses help the state to decide and monitor who is selling alcohol and who is not supposed to be. Finally, taxes on alcohol is a policy that helps the federal and state governments monitor alcohol consumption. On the state level, Pennsylvania’s tax on malt beverages is $ 2.48 on every barrel sold and the tax on liquor is 18% (source 7). Every state has the power to have a different tax rate than Pennsylvania. At the federal level, the last change to tax rates was in 1951. The taxes we set at $.29 per gallon of beer, $.17 to $3.40 per gallon of wine depending on the content
and type, and $10.50 per proof gallon for distilled liquor (source 7). The federal policy on tax on alcohol affects all the states. None of the policies put forth from the state and federal government directly affect the likelihood of alcohol addiction to decrease in the United States, but they do help prevent underage drinking. The 21st amendment gives the states the power to decide how they are going to monitor who is selling alcohol, who is consuming it and the taxes they will put on alcohol. The federal government has the power to make policies about how much tax there will be at the national level. There is some overlap between the state and federal policies on alcohol, an example of this was the National Minimum Drinking Age Act.