FORT BLISS DRINKING AGE
FORT BLISS, Texas (AP) – Fort Bliss stood for years as the last Army post in America where if you were old enough to fight and die, you were old enough to have a beer.
But the party’s over at the military base in the far West Texas desert near El Paso.
The new commanding general says that too many drunken-driving crashes and arrests and too many fights are prompting him to raise the on-post drinking age from 18 to 21. That brings the 17,000-soldier post in line with what’s been the law in the rest of Texas since 1986.
Furthermore, the nearby Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez will now be off limits. All Fort Bliss soldiers are barred from slipping across the border.
