The beer capital of the world
April 16, 2007
We went hiking at Devil’s Lake yesterday, and one of the things that stood out was the sign on the chateau, that I hadn’t noticed before. It read something like (quoting from memory): “Consumption of malt beverages and liquor prohibited”. I’ve seen parks where alcohol is prohibited before, but I’ve never seen one that carved out a specific exemption for beer. How perfectly fitting.
Coincidentally, today Jonah Goldberg observes, in an argument that has never before been made with such care:
One of the things that astonishes me when I visit college campuses is how successful the 21 age limit has been. I’ve met a large handful (though still a minority) of under-twenty-one-year-olds who don’t drink alcohol, save perhaps sparingly with their parents, because it is against the law. …
Madison is different. Indeed, I was just up there last month and I asked my companions about this phenomenon and they looked at me as if I was crazy. It was like I was in 11th century Norway asking the local vikings whether veganism had caught on.
Heh. An article from the Wisconsin State Journal a few years ago touches on the history of the drinking age:
Two decades ago, few in the booze business believed it would happen here, in the beer capital of the world.
While other, more sober states caved in to the federal government’s order to raise their drinking ages to 21 or lose a portion of highway funds, Wisconsin - insulated by the thick biceps of the Tavern League - would not be easily blackmailed.
Of course, Wisconsin, like the other 49 states, was blackmailed in the end (by that paragon of restrained government, Ronald Reagan). The threatened loss of highway money forced the state to enact a drinking age of 21 (*). It’s something that should clearly be up to the states and not the federal government, but 19- and 20-year olds are not a powerful political constituency . They’re certainly less powerful than mythological polling demographics like “office park soccer moms”, who want the government to stop their kids from (gasp) drinking in college. And once you turn 21, you begin not to care any more, so there’s no real impetus for change, which is a shame.
(*) It’s the worst kind of unfunded mandate, that seeks to address local issues in a busybodyish way (we don’t trust individual states to decide for themselves), as opposed to one that uses the power of the federal government to force state action in areas — like civil rights or environmental law — that actually do affect the entire country.
And even then, mandates are a suboptimal way to achieve change. In my opinion, the best thing the late Republican Congress ever did was repeal the 55-turned-65 national speed limit, which was the ultimate obnoxious unfunded mandate (the bill passed 419-7).