Longtime state Rep. Phyllis Kahn, who has tried for years without success to lower Minnesota's drinking age, is back with two bills that would allow people younger than 21 to drink in bars and restaurants.
"It's a very good way to deal with the serious problem of binge drinking, particularly on college campuses," said Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis, who has the University of Minnesota and Augsburg College in her district.
Kahn's efforts have faced opposition in the past and will again this session, including from Gov. Mark Dayton, but she said there are new reasons for optimism.
The state no longer has to worry about forfeiting federal funds if it lowers the drinking age, Kahn said, and she has several co-sponsors from both parties, at least one willing committee chair in the House and a senator planning to push her bills in that chamber.
The bill she prefers would lower the drinking age in bars and restaurants to 18. The idea is to let young people learn to drink socially as they do in Europe, she said, so they're not scrambling for fake IDs or stocking up on liquor illegally and then binge-drinking in their rooms.
Her other bill would allow underage people to drink in bars and restaurants if accompanied by a parent or guardian or spouse who is of legal age.
Neither bill would lower the age to make purchases at liquor stores.
Part of the objection to Kahn's efforts in the past has been based on the 1984 federal law that threatened states with the loss of 10 percent of their federal highway funding if they didn't move the drinking age to 21.
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But Kahn said that in its 2012 ruling on the Medicaid expansion requirement in the Affordable Care Act, the U.S. Supreme Court established that the federal government can't threaten to withhold funding to compel states to act in a certain way.
To her, that means states can change the drinking age without forfeiting federal dollars.
Rep. Joe Atkins of Inver Grove Heights, the lead Democrat on the House Commerce committee, opposes lowering the drinking age but said he is inclined to agree with Kahn on the federal money.
"The answer is probably we would not lose those funds, but who wants to be the first one to roll the dice?" he asked.
House Commerce Chairman Joe Hoppe, R-Chaska, said he'll schedule a hearing on Kahn's bills and/or legislation of his own to lower the drinking age. He said he would lower it only to 19, though, to provide extra assurance that high school-age kids wouldn't be eligible.
The idea of the 21-year-old minimum was to deter drunken driving and reduce drinking by younger people, Hoppe said.
He said society has made strides on drinking and driving, but "all of the people who run colleges are telling us their binge drinking in college (is) as much or more than ever."
More than 130 university presidents and chancellors have signed a statement as part of the Amethyst Initiative saying that the current law is not working and that the drinking age should be reconsidered.
University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler is not among them. He declined through a spokeswoman to comment on Kahn's bills or the issue of lowering the drinking age.
Sen. Branden Petersen, R-Andover, said he plans to introduce Senate versions of Kahn's legislation. He said he even might propose lowering the age to 18 for both bars and liquor stores on the theory that it is the age of legal adulthood for everything else.
A sign warns customers about the drinking age at the Big 10 Restaurant and Bar in Minneapolis on Thursday, February 5, 2015. (Pioneer Press: Ben Garvin)
"If you can go and die for your country but you can't have a beer, I can't understand that," said Andrew Deziel, 18, of Bloomington, who was drinking a glass of water Thursday at the Big 10 Restaurant and Bar on the U campus.
A spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety said the agency opposes lowering the drinking age. And Dayton said he's not persuaded by what he called the "Phyllis Kahn special."
"I think we are better off staying where we are," the governor said. "I haven't talked to any of the legislators about it, I don't have an etched-in-concrete position, but this debate has been going on appropriately for many years now, and the middle ground comes down to: It should be 21, where it is now."
Atkins agreed.
He said he hasn't heard from anyone in his district the past few years who wants to change the drinking age. "The only place I've heard about it is here at the Capitol," he said. Lowering it, Atkins said, would be "a difficult lift."
Hoppe said that as long as the federal highway funds aren't in jeopardy, he's cautiously optimistic a drinking age change could pass.
"I think it has a chance. I don't want to say it's going to pass. I think for a lot of people it's going to be something they haven't thought of and, when they first hear it, I think a lot of people will have the reaction of 'What? We can't do that.' But we'll see."
Ben Garvin and Rachel E. Stassen-Berger contributed to this report. Doug Belden can be reached at 651-228-5136. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbeldenpipress.
LEGAL DRINKING AGE IN MINNESOTA
Before 1973: 21, the age of legal adulthood.
1973: Lowered to 18 when the age of adulthood dropped to 18.
1976: Raised to 19.
1986: Raised to 21 (anybody who was 19 by Sept. 1, 1986, was grandfathered in) after passage of federal law in 1984 that said states would face 10 percent reductions in federal highway funds unless they raised their age to 21.
-- Minnesota Legislative Reference Library
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