Happy 5th Birthday, Twenty-One Debunked!

On May 5, 2009, Twenty-One Debunked was born as a spinoff of the True Spirit of America Party, which was founded a month prior.  During the past five years, we have fought tooth-and-nail to lower the legal drinking age to 18 in the USA.  We have presented reams of evidence showing that the 21 drinking age simply doesn't work anymore if it ever really did, and that it is the greatest alcohol policy failure since Prohibition.  And it has been an uphill battle, and one in which we must redouble our efforts if we wish to succeed.

So where do we go from here?  Aside from fighting harder, we can learn a valuable lesson from Prohibition in the 1920s.  In the years leading up to Prohibition, women overwhelmingly supported it, but by 1933, over 70% of women had turned against it, and the rest was history.   We can also observe a similar trend as cannabis prohibition comes to an end--there is even a group now called "Moms for Marijuana".  It seems to be a necessary precursor to change of that sort for women to support such a change.  Yet unfortunately there is no such trend for our movement to lower the drinking age to 18, which is really quite a "sausage fest" it seems.   The majority of women still support keeping the drinking age at 21.  And that needs to change yesterday if we are to win.

We need to get the word out about our movement to women, especially mothers.  Even those who support keeping the drinking age at 21 intuitively know on some level that it has been an abject failure, and we as a movement need to build on that intuition and take the thunder away from the neoprohibitionists like MADD.  We need to address any legitimate concerns that those on the fence may have about young adults and alcohol, and show that these concerns can be better addressed with a drinking age of 18 combined with the other components of our proposal.  And it would also be good if our movement had a mothers' organization that could act as a counterweight to MADD.  If the cannabis legalization movement can do it, so can we.

Let America be America again, and lower the drinking age to 18.  If you're old enough to go to war, you're old enough to go to the bar.  'Nuff said.