CO: For decades, 18-year-olds could drink low-alcohol beer in Colorado. Here’s how the changed

CPR News
By Andrew Kenney
August 12, 2024

Jonathan Shikes was one of the last people who were allowed to legally drink beer as a teenager in Colorado.

Today, he’s a beer historian who has chronicled the rise of Colorado’s craft brewing industry. But back in 1987, he was just an 18-year-old looking for a buzz.

At the time, teenagers like him had an unusual, legal option for drinking in the state. They were allowed to buy a special, lower-alcohol variety of beer known as “3.2.” Many people will remember 3.2 as the stuff that was sold at grocery and convenience stores until recently – but back in the 1980s, it was also available to 18-year-olds to purchase and to drink at special bars with names like Mardi Gras and After the Gold Rush.

“It was just a mess of a place,” Shikes recalled of his favorite bar at the time, Thirsty’s, which stood near the current site of Ball Arena in Denver.

Each night, hundreds of high-school seniors, military service members and college students would cram into these places and slam beer by the pitcher. The “3.2” percent limit was actually alcohol by weight, or 4 percent alcohol by volume – similar to most light beers on the market today.

“Coors Extra Gold was our favorite, favorite beer, and Coors Winterfest, which was their one seasonal beer,” recalled Shikes, the author of “Denver Beer: A History of Mile High Brewing.”

But why exactly did Colorado have this unusual setup? Where did it come from, and how did it end? Those were among the questions sparked by a CPR News listener’s recent submission to our Colorado Wonders program.

The question submitter also remembered those blurry nights of teenage drinking. And she wanted to know: “Was this common across the country? Did Coors influence the legislature in order to cash in on the [teenage] market? One had to drink a lot of 3.2 beer to get drunk but, believe me, it was possible!”

For the full picture, I interviewed Shikes, dug through the state’s legislative archives, read research papers and also called a former governor.

First, the short answer:

Colorado’s beer laws were definitely unusual. It was one of only a few states that allowed teenagers to drink 3.2 beer (or to buy alcohol in general) for most of the 20th century. Colorado had one of the longest histories of legal teenage drinking in the country.

But what’s really interesting is how legal teenage drinking ended in Colorado in the 1980s – which was the result of some big changes in the rest of the country.

3.2 beer dates back to the 1930s

When Prohibition ended in the 1930s, most of the U.S. chose to set the drinking age at 21, according to a paper published in Alcohol Health and Research World.

But Colorado and some other states made a little exception.

In 1933, state lawmakers decided that anyone who was 18 or older could buy a drink – as long as it was under 3.2 percent ABW. They reserved the stronger “malt, vinous or spirituous liquors” for 21 and up. (Why did they pick 3.2 as the limit? The distinction was a result of some early and somewhat arbitrary limits set by the federal government as the country tiptoed out of Prohibition.)

Colorado wasn’t the only state to give 3.2 beer a “junior varsity” designation. Kansas, South Carolina and Washington, D.C. also had “split” drinking laws after Prohibition, according to a 1987 study by U.S. DOT.

A couple of other states went even further, setting lower drinking ages for all types of alcohol.

The social upheaval of the ’60s also hit alcohol laws

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, lawmakers started revising the “legal boundaries between childhood and adulthood,” as one dissertation puts it. The shift, like many others in the nation at the time, was fueled in part by the Vietnam War.

The U.S. military was drafting 18-year-olds – and yet in many places, they were not allowed to vote, drink, serve on a jury, run for office, enter contracts and more. Black men faced an even starker version of this contrast. They were drafted in especially high numbers and were the victims of severe racism, discrimination and limited civil rights back home.

The idea of soldiers dying in Vietnam without holding basic rights in their own communities became a focus of the anti-war protest movement. On one front, it encouraged the continued movement for racial equality. But it also led to demands for more rights for younger people.

“Old enough to fight, old enough to vote,” was one rallying cry that echoed through both the Vietnam War and, earlier, World War II.

The nation ultimately passed the 26th Amendment in 1971, lowering the voting age to 18. Meanwhile, state lawmakers were making similar changes on other topics – including drinking.

“Old enough to fight, old enough to drink,” the argument went. Between 1970 and 1975, 29 states lowered the drinking age.

Suddenly, Colorado’s drinking laws were relatively conservative. While 18-year-olds elsewhere could buy the liquor of their choice, Colorado teens were still stuck with 3.2 beer.

By the 1980s, backlash reached Colorado

The era of lower drinking ages didn’t last long, as the rate of fatal accidents involving teenage drivers rapidly spiked, and there was a general backlash to the youth rights movement.

“Accident rates among 18-20 year olds did increase significantly- about 40% for involvement in fatalities,” read an MIT study.

That fueled a movement to restore the drinking age to 21, including the formation of Mothers Against Drunk Driving in 1980. Sixteen states had done so by January 1983, but others – including Colorado – held out.