Lower drinking age for troops considered - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Lower drinking age for troops considered

State legislatures in Kentucky and South Carolina this year are considering proposals to exempt service members from the federally mandated drinking age of 21, enabling any active-duty member 18 or older to buy alcohol with a military-issued I.D.

Lawmakers won’t consider the bills very long — they’re doomed from the start because they would force the states to forfeit millions of dollars in federal highway funds. But the proposals represent a recurring argument among critics of state and U.S. policies: Why trust 18-year-old Americans to kill enemies but not have a beer?

Discuss: Is it time to lower the drinking age for the troops?

“This is a person who is serving right alongside the 21-year-olds or 25-year-olds, standing the same watches, carrying the same weapon, facing the same enemy and potentially sacrificing just as much,” said Kentucky State Rep. David Floyd, a Republican from the state’s central Bluegrass region. “There’s absolutely no difference at all between their levels of responsibility in terms of MOS or anything else. They have the same responsibilities, and in civil society, they should be recognized as full-fledged adults.”

South Carolina State Rep. Fletcher Smith makes a similar argument in support of his version of the bill.

“It’s absurd that people serving in the military are trained to kill on the battlefield but at the same time couldn’t come back home and have a beer,” the Greenville Democrat said. “If you’re old enough to get training in the U.S. military, you should be old enough to get a beer. That training really matures a person.”

Maverick lawmakers in at least five other states — Arizona, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Vermont — have put forth similar proposals since 2000.

But after a 1984 federal law meant accepting the 21-and-over restriction was a pre-condition for a state getting its share of federal dollars, no legislature has wanted to risk a showdown with Washington, said Allison Cokler, a state policy analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Instead, the idea is to make a point about service members — “I call it a military bill, but they all call it an alcohol bill,” Floyd said of critics — and make a statement that underage Americans earn the privilege to drink by joining the services.

Floyd, a 1970 graduate of the Air Force Academy who flew U-2 spy planes and KC-135 tankers until he retired in 1995, was drinking coffee with one of his constituents when he got the idea for the bill. “He said, ‘How come if my 18-year-old son comes back from Iraq, I can’t legally sit down and have a beer with him?’” Floyd said.

Chuck Hurley, CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, is another former military man, who left the Navy in the 1970s as a lieutenant. The “old-enough-to-kill-and-vote-so-why-not-drink” thesis is a “false argument,” he said, that critics reach for to criticize the drinking age — and which is unfair to 18-year-olds who have chosen not to join the military.

Besides, alcohol has been and remains too big a problem for the armed services to risk special privileges for troops, Hurley said.

“It’s taken the military 25 years to get better control of alcohol, and this would take it in the wrong direction, in our view,” he said.

In the 1980s, one of the biggest supporters of the 21-year-old drinking age was then-Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, whose support was due to the military was losing hundreds of troops each year in drunken-driving accidents, Hurley said. He added that alcohol-related fatalities remain a leading cause of non-combat fatalities.

MORE: S.C. lawmaker pushes lower drinking age for troops

DISCUSS: Is it time to lower the age?