[1][2][3] The act would punish any state that allowed persons under 21 years to purchase alcoholic beverages by reducing its annual federal highway apportionment by 10 percent.

Legislation concerning the legal minimum drinking age in the United States can be traced back to the days of Prohibition.

The slogan traced its roots to World War II, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt lowered the military draft age to 18.

[5] By 1995, all 50 states, two permanently inhabited territories, and D.C. were in compliance, but Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands (and Guam until 2010) remained at 18 despite them losing 10% of federal highway funding.

[6] The Court expressly distinguished South Dakota v. Dole, the drinking age case, because only a small portion of highway funds were at risk.

In 2001, New York State Assembly member Félix Ortiz introduced a bill that would lower the drinking age back to 18.

[8] In 1998, the National Youth Rights Association was founded, in part, to seek to lower the drinking age back to 18.

[12] When brewing magnate Pete Coors raised the drinking age as a campaign issue during the 2004 U.S. Senate race in Colorado, Republican leaders praised his stand on states' rights but distanced themselves from apparent self-interest.

However, few schools have actually implemented these recommendations, and according to a recent study, most of the intervention programs currently in place on college campuses have proven ineffective.

Only 50% of surveyed colleges offered intervention programs, 33% coordinated efforts with the surrounding community to monitor illegal alcohol sales, 15% confirmed that surrounding establishments offered responsible beverage service training, and 7% restricted the number of alcohol outlets within the community.

Whatever the reasons may be, a multitude of options are available should colleges choose to institute programs to decrease instances of underage drinking on campus.

"[21] In contrast, several studies, including a 2011 review, showed data that went against the idea that raising the drinking age to 21 actually saved lives in the long run.

[27][28][25] Additionally, Canada, Australia, the UK, and several other nations saw similar or faster declines in traffic fatalities than the USA did since the early 1980s despite not raising their drinking ages to 21.