ABSTRACT
When prohibition fever swept across the United States, and those in its grip sought to purge the demon rum from the land, first at the municipal and state level, and then at the national level, at least the prohibitionists understood that they lacked the constitutional foundation from which to issue a national interdiction against alcohol. Drinking by the young was widespread and socially acceptable in much of the colonies. Consumption of spirituous brews was subject to local regulation, although “youthful drinking was seldom a subject of specific regulation,” according to James F. Mosher in “A History of Youth Drinking Laws.” California banned selling or even giving alcohol to a person under sixteen in 1872; the age was raised to eighteen in 1891. The most common minimum legal age to purchase and consume alcohol was twenty-one: in 1969, 37 states forbade beer to anyone under twenty-one, and 48 states outlawed liquor to that same group.
