--- title: Camille Paglia: Alcohol-Drinking Age of 21 Is Too High description: The National Minimum Drinking Age Act, passed by Congress 30 years ago this July, is a violation of civil liberties and must be repealed canonical: https://time.com/72546/drinking-age-alcohol-repeal/ author: Camille Paglia article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-04-23T11:31:44.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:45:35.381Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Camille Paglia: The Drinking Age Is Past Its Prime og:description: The National Minimum Drinking Age Act, passed by Congress 30 years ago this July, is a violation of civil liberties and must be repealed og:url: https://time.com/72546/drinking-age-alcohol-repeal/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Camille Paglia: The Drinking Age Is Past Its Prime twitter:description: The National Minimum Drinking Age Act, passed by Congress 30 years ago this July, is a violation of civil liberties and must be repealed twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # The Drinking Age Is Past Its Prime > Sponsored content. 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A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=80e8d7cd-8c9a-49a0-a51f-30e7a03dc69b&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: How to Drink Scotch: TIME Explains [Watch (HLS stream): How to Drink Scotch: TIME Explains](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Na3rSjFP.m3u8) (4:01)  _Published 2013-03-12. Master Distiller Richard Paterson of The Dalmore shows TIME's Josh Sanburn the real way to drink scotch._ by [Camille Paglia](https://time.com/author/camille-paglia/) ## Camille Paglia Apr 23, 2014 11:31 AM UTC by [Camille Paglia](https://time.com/author/camille-paglia/) ## Camille Paglia Apr 23, 2014 11:31 AM UTC The National Minimum Drinking Age Act, passed by Congress 30 years ago this July, is a gross violation of civil liberties and must be repealed. It is absurd and unjust that young Americans can vote, marry, enter contracts and serve in the military at 18 but cannot buy an alcoholic drink in a bar or restaurant. The age-21 rule sets the U.S. apart from all advanced Western nations and lumps it with small or repressive countries like Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Indonesia, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Congress was stampeded into this puritanical law by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, who with all good intentions were wrongly intruding into an area of personal choice exactly as did the hymn-singing 19th century temperance crusaders, typified by Carrie Nation smashing beer barrels with her hatchet. Temperance fanaticism eventually triumphed and gave us 14 years of Prohibition. That in turn spawned the crime syndicates for booze smuggling, laying the groundwork for today’s global drug trade. Thanks a lot, Carrie! Now that marijuana regulations have been liberalized in Colorado, it’s time to strike down this dictatorial national law. Government is not our nanny. The decrease in drunk-driving deaths in recent decades is at least partly attributable to more uniform seat-belt use and a strengthening of DWI penalties. Today, furthermore, there are many other causes of traffic accidents, such as the careless use of cell phones or prescription drugs like Ambien — implicated in the recent trial and acquittal of Kerry Kennedy for driving while impaired. Learning how to drink responsibly is a basic lesson in growing up — as it is in wine-drinking France or in Germany, with its family-oriented beer gardens and festivals. Wine was built into my own Italian-American upbringing, where children were given sips of my grandfather’s homemade wine. This civilized practice descends from antiquity. Beer was a nourishing food in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and wine was identified with the life force in Greece and Rome: _In vino veritas_ (In wine, truth). Wine as a sacred symbol of unity and regeneration remains in the Christian Communion service. Virginia Woolf wrote that wine with a fine meal lights a “subtle and subterranean glow, which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse.” What this cruel 1984 law did is deprive young people of safe spaces where they could happily drink cheap beer, socialize, chat and flirt in a free but controlled public environment. Hence in the 1980s we immediately got the scourge of crude binge drinking at campus fraternity keg parties, cut off from the adult world. Women in that boorish free-for-all were suddenly fighting off date rape. Club drugs — ecstasy, methamphetamine, ketamine (a veterinary tranquilizer) — surged at raves for teenagers and on the gay male circuit scene. Alcohol relaxes, facilitates interaction, inspires ideas and promotes humor and hilarity. Used in moderation, it is quickly flushed from the system, with excess punished by a hangover. But deadening pills, such as today’s massively overprescribed antidepressants, linger in body and brain and may have unrecognized long-term side effects. Those toxic chemicals, often manufactured by shadowy firms abroad, have been worrisomely present in a recent uptick of unexplained suicides and massacres. Half of the urban professional class in the U.S. seems doped on meds these days. As a libertarian, I support the decriminalization of marijuana, but there are many problems with pot. From my observation, pot may be great for jazz musicians and Beat poets, but it saps energy and willpower and can produce physiological feminization in men. Also, it is difficult to measure the potency of plant-derived substances like pot. With brand-name beer or liquor, however, purchased doses have exactly the same strength and purity from one continent to another, with no fear of contamination by dangerous street additives like PCP. Exhilaration, ecstasy and communal vision are the gifts of Dionysus, god of wine. Alcohol’s enhancement of direct face-to-face dialogue is precisely what is needed by today’s technologically agile generation, magically interconnected yet strangely isolated by social media. Clumsy hardcore sexting has sadly supplanted simple hanging out over a beer at a buzzing dive. By undermining the art of conversation, the age-21 law has also had a disastrous effect on our arts and letters, with their increasing dullness and mediocrity. This tyrannical infantilizing of young Americans must stop! _Paglia is the author of_ Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art From Egypt to Star Wars. **MORE:** How to Drink Scotch ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] You swivel round, bring it up and say hello. Then you go back to him and say how are you and then you go back up and say it quite well, thank you very much. [ MUSIC ] Hi, I'm Josh Sanborn with Time and I'm here with Richard Paterson, Master Distiller at The Dalmore. And we are at the upper east side, in New York City at Daneille. I'm here with Richard to talk about Scotch. How he makes his Scotch and how to drink his Scotch. So this is just Sherry and what you're gonna do is, you're gonna, you take this. And you go around the world and you find all these casks. Cherry casks. You put your whiskey in those casks and they sit for two maybe three years. This is the Copacapita gloss. Aromas are going to rise and go into your nostrils and that's why, first of all, you have to pour a small amount in the glass. You pour it in like that, you swirl it around, and then you throw it away. And then you can see the lip of the glass is hanging there because that will get rid of any odors. Then hold at the bottom like that. You swirl around bring it up and say hello. Then you go back to and say how are you. And then you go back up and say quite well. Thank you very much. Then what you do is you put it in a mug. Mm. Mm. You wait, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four. Then the flavors come up. Can you describe what you're getting out of that? I'm getting marzipan. I'm getting citrus. I'm getting lovely pears. I'm getting the apples. But I'm getting the lovely rich plums emanated from the pore. The sweetness, the chocolate, it's all there. And then a little hint of licorice towards the end alright. Remember, what you smell. Unlike wine, it's what you're gonna get as a flavor. That's it. Now, big mouth full. That's it. Get right in there, right. On to the middle of the tongue away from the tip. Keep it there, keep it there, keep it there. Put it underneath the tongue. When it goes underneath the tongue, little bit spicy, little bit rich. But, aroma is teasing at these lovely flavors. Big deep breath now. Swallow and then open you mouth. Yeah, that's it. Let it go down. Wait for it, wait for it. 44 %, here we go. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, you never blinked, which is good. And then keep it there, and now you see it. The tangerine. You're gonna see the plum [ UNKNOWN ]. I am getting some fruit. The second taste is the most important. Is that right? Because you've had coffee, chocolate, you maybe having a yogurt, a banana for breakfast, or what have you. This will get rid of everything, alright? Keep it there, keep it there, keep it there. It goes [ UNKNOWN ], I look into your eyes, you swallow. Alright, as it goes down you don't blink. If it was to strong you might have to add a little water. I don't know what they are but something's happening. So if you take it with a columbian coffee niguraga java cofffee, two mouthfulls of that. Then put it over. Let it go down, take the diner blue down more. Keep it in the mud. Let it go down. Take a chocolate, 72 % coco fat, let it melt. It will all fuse together. What is the most common mistake that you see? First one is like this. The girl out there is high, nice to see you. How has your day been? What? You gotta give it love. You gotta give it tenderness. This is. You gotta get to know it. You gotta get to know it. But the worst thing is new lots. Because what do you do if I put you outside? You get a cold, you get a chill. Yeah. That's what happens to the whiskey. It freezes it, it masks it. This is so good. Let's see it in its natural environment at 44 % and hold it on the mat. Well, Richard, this has been amazing. I feel like I know how to drink scotch now. Well, you're gonna go away. And when you go to bed tonight, put your head in the pillow, suddenly it'll come back. 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