§ 129.003.Alcoholic Beverage Code Prevails

A conflicts rule preserving the one significant exception to the age of majority.

The minimum age provisions of the Alcoholic Beverage Code prevail to the extent of any conflict with this chapter.

Without it, the reinterpretation provision would have caused a problem. That section converts pre-1973 minimum ages of 19, 20 or 21 into 18 — which, applied to the alcohol laws, would have lowered the drinking age by operation of a general statute.

Texas has moved its drinking age more than once. It was lowered to 18 in 1973 and raised to 19 and then to 21 in the 1980s, under pressure from federal highway funding conditions. This section keeps that history in the Alcoholic Beverage Code where it belongs.

"To the extent of any conflict" is the ordinary formula, so the two operate together wherever they can and the Alcoholic Beverage Code governs only where they cannot.

The section is confined to minimum age provisions. It does not make the Alcoholic Beverage Code prevail generally, and this chapter continues to fix the age of majority for every purpose that code does not address.

The result is that a person aged 18 in Texas is an adult for contracts, litigation, property and consent, and is not one for alcohol — which is the position in every state, arrived at here by a one-sentence carve-out.