‘Oh, Muffy! You simply must try this Chardonnay!’
Thanks for the visual! 
Is it legal in the US for 18-20 year olds to drink alcohol provided by others in private residences?
Though I cant provide a cite for this, I am certain that I read that Belgium (a beer culture if I have have ever seen one; maybe not so much a binge drinking culture) began allowing/encouraging schools to serve low strength beer at lunch to students to get them away from the over-consumption of sugar-based soda…
I have personally bought cans of Stella or Jupilar from “Coke” machines (they also held cans of soda and water) all over Belgium.
It is too bad that the US cant find some sort of graduated (age based or otherwise) system to allow some responsible under 21 year olds to consume some alcohol under some circumstances.
Well, 21 is certainly a stupid number.
An 18-year-old American has probably had a driver’s license for two years, and is eligible for military service or to stuff his pecker into the orifice of his choosing, or to undertake pretty much any activity that an older person can. However, he cannot celebrate afterwards with a beer.
I’m fine with keeping the minimum age at 18, though. After all, nobody really gives a shit if parents are serving their own kids alcohol at home, and I don’t think it’s really that big a deal whether kids can drink with their parents at restaurants.
I’m guessing that was real wine with my communion when little.
I was given a taste of beer when about 8, but I hated it. My father once gave a sip of beer to a friends 3 year old and they both thought it hilarious.
I agree 100%
I certainly don’t claim to have the answers to all the various issues and details a change would entail, but its pretty clear to me that there are better ways to reduce overconsumption than what our current system is doing…
My fiancee was working on his sommalier accreditation before 21. He started taking classes for that while still in culinary school, which is a 2 year program and he started it at age 18… you do the math. While he didn’t finish he sommalier accreditation, he still took classes and still had to taste wine.
I just read (on Yahoo) that Milan will soon be the first Italian city to forbid the sale/consumption of alcohol to children under the age of 16…
The article was brief, and it didnt say what the previous (if any) age cutoff was.
I remember that the Netherlands has (had?) an age limit of 16 for beer, and 18 for hard alcohol.
Apparently the young people of Milan have been tippling the vino and raising hell so now the polizia are saying “16 means 16”.
As I understand it, the drinking age of 21 wasn’t intended to keep alcohol out of the hands of 20 year olds, but to keep it out of the hands of high schoolers. The idea is that at a high school party, there are likely to be a few 18 year olds who could relatively easily bring enough alcohol for everyone (including the freshmen), but almost everyone has either finished high school or dropped out by 21, so there will be less leakage to the 14-15 year olds. This is why there’s so much looking the other way for technically-underage drinking at colleges.
Nah, though I’m sure that justification has been used at some point since.
Reagan’s Presidential Commission Against Drunk Driving recommended a national blanket drinking age of 21 to combat the “bloody borders” problem.
Post-Vietnam, a number of states reduced their drinking ages from 21 to 18, reasoning that 18-year-olds were seen as adults for the purposes of the draft, and that treating them as children for the purposes of alcohol consumption made no sense. This resulted in the “blood(y) borders” phenomenon - a sharp increase in drink-driving accidents in border areas between states that stuck with 21 and states that went to 18 (such as Florida and Georgia) caused by kids driving to the more permissive state to get legally drunk, then driving home again. Hence the impetus for a national blanket age. You can read the transcript here of a speech by one of the head douchebags behind the law, Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), explaining the impetus for the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of of 1984.
Note that the Federal government couldn’t actually ban drinking by those under 18- instead, under the law, states which refused to “voluntarily” raise their age limits to 21 forfeited 10% of their Federal highway funds.
Reagan threatened to veto the bill at first, quite reasonably calling it a states’ rights violation. Then MADD got to work, and whipped up public hysteria using drunk-driving and teen driving casualty statistics- some of them legitimate, some less so. Once he realized it was a vote-winner Reagan got behind it too.
The Rehnquist Court upheld its constitutionality in ‘87 vis-a-vis the states’ rights argument. Wikipedia says the due process and equal protection clause arguments have never been tested in court, and I haven’t got Westlaw access at home so I can’t check.
Incidentally, the bloody borders phenomenon still exists- on the Canadian and Mexican borders, since the drinking ages there is 18.
The thing that makes me angry about the drinking age is that it’s the wrong solution for the wrong problem. Drinking isn’t the danger – it’s driving. 16-year-olds are, on average, rotten drivers; they’re just worse when they’ve been drinking. The social and economic forces are too strongly opposed to raising the driving age, so they raised the drinking age instead (I doubt that raising the driving age even occurred to many activists).
Louisiana found a way around that through creative use of laws. Drinking at 18 for both buying anything and drinking in bars was 100% legal when I was a college student at Tulane and it lasted until at least 1997. It only collapsed a little due to internal pressure. There are still some really screwy loopholes and the drinking culture means that most minors can still have alcohol when they want without much legal worry.
Yes exactly. To say this more generally, in the age before ID cards when shoppers were sized up on looks, a “21 only” law was really meant to exclude the teenagers. It’s stuck since then for reasons of morality.
The whole idea of, “there’s a special day after which you can get as poised as you want” is hogwash. There must be some tapering-in. Alcohol isn’t dangerous or poisonous. Alcohol in large enough amounts does any of those harms. Of course, our culture loves to ignore the concept of dosage in general.
I remember this as well. The catch was that, while the law said you had to be 21 to buy booze, the law said that it was illegal to SELL booze to someone under age 18.
So, Louisiana met the federal standard by making it illegal to purchase or publicly consume booze until age 21, but store and bars could sell to age 18+ without fear of prosecution.
In 1995, the Louisiana legislature closed this loophole and made it 21 across the board. This law was challenged and the Louisiana Supreme Court struck the whole thing down, setting the drinking age for everything back to age 18. In one of the more shameless cave ins in legal history, they “reconsidered” a few months later and reinstated age 21.
On top of this, it was completely legal in Louisiana for 18-year-olds to enter bars. Bouncers were IDing for 18, not 21.
That’s legal in most places, isn’t it?
Eight years old might be a little too young but I don’t see a problem if the child was around 16 and closely supervised. Also, I think it’s ridiculous for people to get upset about parents serving their college-age children a glass of wine with Thanksgiving dinner or some other special occasion.
Incidentally, when I was three a friend of my Dad’s gave me a sip of beer. What I remembered most about it was that it tasted bad and I never really had much a desire to imbibe for years afterward.
In Wisconsin, you cannot purchase if you’re under 21, but you can consume if the alcohol is purchased by a parent/guardian or spouse who is 21 or older and they’re supervising the consumption. I believe you can also transport sealed alcohol if you’re 18+, and you can enter bars and liquor stores at 18+.
At a family gathering when I was about that age, when sitting around a fire outside I accidentally grabbed my great-uncle’s beer instead of my soda. My kid tastebuds thought it was really gross.
I know liquor store laws are different in some places, at least. When I was 20, I went to visit some 21+ friends in Delaware. I went into the liquor store with them when they were picking up drinks for the shindig that was going to happen that weekend–the cashier carded all of us, even though I wasn’t purchasing anything (which would never happen in Wisconsin).
You can, legally, but they (the restaurants) can still refuse service. I worked for a restaurant, and we still never served anyone under 21. Parent or no. Spouse or no. No one under 21. (I live in WI, BTW.)
My “grownup” buds feel the same way. 
YMMV When I was three my parents had an outdoor party with beer. I toddled around getting a small sip from everybody – a lot of everybodies. Mom found me passed out on a bed. I have no recollection of it personally – it’s the story Mom would tell to embarrass me in front of dates – so I guess you could call it my first (and last) blackout.