By Velvet Wahl | Downtown Devil
Arizonians for Tomorrow is looking to lower the legal drinking age in the 2020 election. The organization filed a petition in 2018 to get a bill in the next election that could lower the drinking age to 18.
The petition, which needs 237,645 signatures total to become a bill, only needs about 17,000 more, according to Arizonians for Tomorrow Chair James Leamon.
“We believe that if you are old enough to fight for your country that you should be old enough to drink,” Leamon said. “The fact of the matter is that a lot of people under 21 are drinking anyway. We believe that you should give them the safe environment to do so.”
The minimum drinking age in the United States has changed several times in the last century with states setting the minimum legal drinking age anywhere from 18 to 21. But in 1984, Congress passed an act to raise the minimum drinking age to 21, withholding state highway funds if states did not comply.
If the drinking age is lowered to 18 in the next election, Arizona is at risk of losing state highway funds. To counteract the loss of funding, the bill will also include a 30 percent sales tax on alcohol to anyone between the ages of 18 and 20.
Twenty percent of the tax would go towards the state highway fund and 10 percent to local municipalities.
