Legal Drinking Age Timeline

  • Period: to

    Prohibition Movement

    Prohibition of alcohol was enforced from the 1840s to the 1920s
  • Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

    Established the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the US by declaring the production, transport and sale of (but not the consumption or private possession of) alcohol illegal.
  • Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution

    The twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution repealed prohibition in the US,
  • Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution

    Prohibited state and the federal governments from setting a voting age higher than eighteen. In turn, some 30 states lowered the purchasing age of alochol to 18 to match the new voting age.
  • National Minimum Drinking Age Act

    The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 was passed on July 17, 1984 by the United States Congress. It punished every state that allowed people under 21 years old to purchase and publicly possess alcoholic beverages by reducing its annual federal highway budget by 10%