Stopping for a quick one in PullmanNo, not that kind of cougar.

Stopping for a quick one in PullmanNo, not that kind of cougar. Or the other kind. Instead it’s the species locals typically associate with booze: Polykeggus palousis or the Washington State University student. Specifically, it’s WSU student Dustin J. Reischmann, 21, who wants to lower the state’s booze-buying age to 19 from the current 21 with proposed Initiative 1072. “My hope is that there would be less of a problem enforcing laws (by lowering the legal drinking age),” he says, “and 19 keeps it out of high schools.”The measure, which by Reischmann’s own admission is an “experiment,” isn’t going to qualify for the November ballot. The philosophy major has run out of money, volunteers and time — even if he were able to get the first two. “People say they are willing to volunteer and then they say they want money,” he says. “I don’t have any more money to put into it.”Reischman filed the necessary paperwork last February after learning about the initiative process in class. And he believes in the issue: Why legally voting before drinking, he wonders. Why legal military service before an ability to buy a beer?Until the middle 1980s, the drinking age varied across the United States. Then former President Ronald Reagan signed into law the National Minimum Age Drinking Act which linked federal highway funds to a minimum 21-year-old drinking age. States with 18- and 19-year-old legal drinking ages soon raised the limit.Oddly, the language in Reischmann’s Initiative 1072 didn’t actually allow for 19-year-old to drink in bars. It simply allowed them to purchase booze. Reischmann says the language was by design.”You have to move law along slowly,” he says. “One step at a time.”And as for 1072, Reischmann says he’d be happy to pass the torch to anyone who wants to fund or run this thing. He’s got school work to do.