It was late in the evening on June 30, 1988, and 19- and 20-year-olds were bellied up to bars across Wyoming, enjoying one last legal drink before the stroke of midnight signaling the state’s reluctant compliance with a federal law raising the drinking age to 21.
Lawmakers in Wyoming, which was the last holdout against the National Minimum Drinking Age Act signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 to reduce alcohol-related car crashes among young people, considered the legislation a major government overreach.
“We don’t like to be blackmailed by the Federal Government; we don’t like to be dictated to by the Federal Government; we don’t like to be told what to do,” Dennis Curran, spokesman for Democrat and then-governor Mike Sullivan, told The New York Times after Wyoming complied.
It wouldn’t be the last time that Wyoming would dig in its heels against Washington, D.C., bureaucrats over issues perceived to threaten state sovereignty.
Eventual Change
The federal government threatened to withhold transportation money from states that didn’t comply.
Former Wyoming Republican U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson opposed the legislation, saying he favored an amendment that would instead reward states with more transportation money once they complied with the new law.
South Dakota sued the government over the drinking age bill. However, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the government’s right to withhold money from states that didn’t cooperate.
Wyoming didn’t back down from the government threats, losing a total of $11.8 million in 1986 and 1987. It was slated to sacrifice an additional $8.2 million in federal funds if it didn’t comply by July 1, 1988.
The Wyoming Legislature defeated four bills to raise the drinking age from 19 to 21 before passing legislation in March 1988.
Sullivan, who is now 86 and served as governor from 1987 to 1995 and as U.S. ambassador to Ireland from 1998 to 2001, said Wyoming has long bristled at being pushed around by the federal government.
However, when the feds threatened to continue taking away highway money, state legislators finally capitulated.
“During those times, particularly, funds were important to (building) better roads,” said Sullivan, who believes that without pressure from the government, Wyoming would have still eventually raised the legal drinking age.
One of the reasons lawmakers approved the bill was the “bloody border” nickname attached to Wyoming.
Because Wyoming was the only state that allowed 19-year-olds to drink, teenagers would often travel from other states to consume alcohol and then drive home drunk.
Laramie County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Walt Vanatta told members of the state Senate Judiciary Committee in 1988 that in one instance, a University of Northern Colorado student drank himself to death when he and a friend came to Wyoming to buy alcohol legally.
The Wyoming Highway Patrol also endorsed increasing the drinking age.
Positive Results
Raising the drinking age has been positive, Vanatta, who worked for the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office for 12 years and retired as the police chief of Craig, Colorado, told Cowboy State Daily on Friday.
“If you are 21, life experiences help you make better choices,” he said.
Del McOmie, 90, who served as the mayor of Lander for 16 years during two separate terms and as a state legislator for 14 years, recalled several tragic crashes in Fremont County from underage drinking.
“There was a problem with keggers in Fremont County,” he said. “We had a kid messing around with a gun who shot and killed another teen. There were car wrecks with vehicles going off the road and into ditches.”
Wyoming’s delay in raising the drinking age is akin to another bureaucratic standoff that began in 1958, when the federal government threatened to reduce Wyoming’s transportation funds unless highways painted with yellow stripes were repainted with white stripes.
The state vehemently opposed the mandate, arguing that white stripes were impossible to see in snowstorms.
“No son of a bitch in Washington is going to tell us what color of paint to use,” 90-year-old Jim Hicks, who operated the Buffalo Bulletin for more than 60 years, said about the prevailing sentiment of residents.
Hicks recalled that growing up, alcohol and teenagers were part of the fabric of Johnson County. Booze often flowed at country dances, and after social events there was always someone in a parking lot with a jug of liquor or some beer.
Rebecca Green, executive director of Mothers Against Drunk Driving’s Wyoming chapter, said she isn’t surprised that the state was the last to comply with the drinking age law.
In the 1980s, Wyoming teens, particularly in rural areas, frequently participated in “field parties” at secluded locations that often involved alcohol, she added.
“There were not a lot of things for them to do,” Green said.
According to MADD, which was instrumental in getting the federal drinking age bill passed, the legislation has in more than 40 years saved more than 25,000 lives and has decreased automobile crashes by more than 16%.
“When states had lower legal drinking ages in the U.S., the underage drinking problem was worse,” said Green, adding that before the bill, teens drinking and driving were involved in more than twice as many fatal traffic crashes as they are now.
Scott Schwebke can be reached at scott@cowboystatedaily.com.
