YALE STUDENT ARGUES FOR lowered drinking age. I strongly recommend that the GOP get behind defederalizing the drinking age. Not only is it the right thing to do — the federal 21-year-old drinking age was a dumb idea of Liddy Dole’s and never should have been enacted into law — but it would help them with the youth vote. Seems like a natural issue for, say, Rand Paul, but any of the new Tea Party crowd in the Senate could run with this.