1983 was a big year for college students. The Wyoming House, Travel and Wildlife committee was considering raising the drinking age from 19 to 21. At the time, many states had lower drinking ages below 21, and Wyoming had the lowest at 19. Relatedly, the Branding Iron was teeming with advertisements for special nights at local bars and appetizing photos of beers from various breweries.
On Feb. 17, the Branding Iron news editor, Matt Winters, wrote about students testifying before the committee, relaying their opinions and the evidence supporting them. According to his article, a group of Laramie County Community College students said that increasing the drinking age would “adversely delay the process by which young people become accustomed to the responsibility of drinking. They also said the answer to drunk driving was educating student drivers, not raising the drinking age.
The testimony was successful enough to get the committee to schedule additional time to debate the bill, and it persuaded committee chairwoman Peg Sherve to recommend a ‘grandfathering policy’ for the bill.
“They came in with charts and graphs. Each of them had a part, and they knew their parts very well,” Shreve had said in Feb, ‘83.
The next day, Feb. 18, 1983, the Wyoming House, Travel and Wildlife committee killed the bill, and the drinking age remained 19 years old in Wyoming until 1988 when the state raised the age to 21 in compliance with the 1984 law, National Minimum Drinking Age Act which pressured states to raise their drinking age by reducing their highway appointment until they complied. Wyoming was the last state to raise the drinking age.
