State Profiles of Underage Drinking Laws

This section of the APIS Web site provides State-by-State summaries of statutes and regulations related to underage drinking and access to alcohol. For each State, summaries are provided for twelve policy topics that are particularly relevant to underage drinking. To view the summary for a given jurisdiction, click on the appropriate part of the map or select a jurisdiction from the drop-down menu.

The APIS Policy Topics section of this Web site presents additional detailed information on these and other policy topics. Each policy topic provides a description, a summary of relevant Federal law, interactive comparison tables showing policies in effect on a user-specified date or changes over time, explanatory notes and limitations, and definitions and selected references as appropriate.

The APIS Highlight on Underage Drinking provides an overview of underage drinking policy in the United States and other material that may be helpful in understanding the policy topics presented in the these State profiles. In addition, maps and charts for all of these policy topics are collected on a single page to provide a more comprehensive graphical overview of underage policies.

A Note on Interpretation of APIS data:  It is frequently helpful to consider APIS Underage Drinking policy topics in connection with one another rather than in isolation, in order to avoid misinterpretation of the data. For example, all States prohibit minors (a term widely used in this context to refer to persons under the age of 21) from possessing alcoholic beverages, but not all States prohibit minors from purchasing alcoholic beverages. The fact that a State does not prohibit underage purchasing should not be interpreted as meaning that the State permits such activity, since the minor would have to violate the possession prohibition in order to complete the purchase. States may create separate offenses because they consider illegal purchase to be a more serious violation. These types of overlapping provisions are most common regarding the Underage Possession/Consumption/Internal Possession of Alcohol policy topic. Note also that various exceptions may apply that may not be identical across the policies. For example, a parent may allow his/her underage child to possess alcohol in any private location but may be prohibited from furnishing the alcohol without exception.

Select a jurisdiction by choosing from the drop-down list or clicking on the map.