I came up with this mental puzzle when I was still a child. Forgive me if it sounds silly to some (remember I was just a kid). Actually even as a kid, people often told me I was pretty smart (I digress).
You are about to have a birthday, at midnight that night, naturally. And let’s just say for the sake of argument, you are about to turn 21(drinking age in the US). Midnight strikes in the Eastern time zone. But then you cross the border west, in the adjacent time zone where it is 11p. So now you are 20 again?
Then you rent a car, ride a plane whatever, to the border of the west adjacent time zone. What is that? Mountain Time, I believe. And you again cross one second after midnight. So it is 11pm again.
You do this two more times, until you are at the Aleutian Islands, right at the international date line, ironically.
Two questions: Are you legally going back in time? And more importantly, are you breaking the law if you take a sip of beer, but only swallow it as you cross into the new time zone? Remember, you are 20 in the new time zone, but 21 where you start (I.e., drinking age in the USA).
As I said, I came up with the problem when I was still quite young. But I don’t care what the rest of you might say, I still like it:).
You are changing time zones, not “going back in time.” Legality has nothing to do with it. It’s perfectly legal to change time zones and even cross the date line.
Under this scenario, you consumed (put in your mouth) beer in a time and place where it was legal. Swallowing is your own business. If you legally bought beer and then crossed the time zone with the beer in your hand, I suppose you’ve committed a crime. as you have then possessed alcohol while you were not 21, although you were 21 when you obtained it.
In many places, it is the purchase of alcohol that has an age limit attached, not the others.
For the more general sense of the question, I wonder if you even need to travel between time zones for this to be a quirk. As long as you’re in a different time zone than you were born in, this could be relevant.
It seems to me that any age-limit related law ought to be based on whatever time zone you were born in, rather than the one you currently exist in.
AFAIK, age limits are based on what your ID says, and IDs don’t record time of day. If my ID says I was born on Jan 1, 1970 then all ages are based off that. Time of day is never taken into account. Same with timezones, completely irrelevant. The DOB is interpreted in the timezone you are currently in. Where you were when you were born doesn’t matter.
So, in the OP, if the calendar and your ID says your 20 years, 364 days old in the current time zone, then you’re underage regardless whether you can step two feet to the left and be 21 years old.
I agree that this is probably true, and that for most practical purposes it is definitely true, but are we sure that it is fully technically legally true?
IDs are a convenience and a useful method of proof, but they aren’t controlling on the law. If you had a misprinted ID, it wouldn’t make you a different age, legally. If the law says “No one younger than age X…” then I can imagine someone attempting to make a case based on the fact that they are over that age due to having been alive for a longer duration than X years.
Your question is basically the same as “could I get in trouble for underage drinking if I take a sip but spit it out.” AFAIK, state laws regarding alcohol and age are focused on possession and purchase. If we found a relevant law, I doubt we’d be able to find a clause or case law that would tell us whether a judge would be okay with an excuse such as “I was only holding it in my mouth and then spitting or waiting until midnight.”
But I guess you’re asking if it would “technically” be against the law, not how a judge would rule, so we’d have to find a law in a jurisdiction first, and see if we can nail down what “consumption” entails.
I got it backwards the first time. If there’s an age 21 limit for consuming alcohol, I don’t see how one would not “technically” be breaking the law by swallowing when 20 in the new time zone.
Because you’re not actually 20? If you’re 21, you’re 21. You don’t age backwards, no matter what direction you might have traveled since you turned 21.
Seems like there should be, since it’s essentially the same setup as before there was a national drinking age. I went to college in a town very near the border of a state where the drinking age was 18, and boy did we take advantage of that.
Similarly: Imagine two people, Alice born at noon on Feb. 29, 2000, and Bob born in the same hospital at noon on March 1, 2000. Clearly, Alice is one day older than Bob. And yet, both will become legally able to drink on the same date, March 1, 2021. How can they be the same age if one is one day older than the other?
I’m not going to address the “legal” issues, but I’ll point out that unless you’re older than your mid-40s, you aren’t the first to come up with this concept. Chapter 1 of Larry Niven’s novel Ringworld opens with this very idea: the protagonist Louis Wu leaving his 200th birthday party (far future, anti-aging medical technology is routine) at just before local midnight and teleporting westward one time zone. He has postponed the end of his birth day for another hour, and continues to do so at hourly intervals for 24 additional hours. He celebrates his 200th birthday for 48 hours.
Not true. If a bartender is doing his/her job correctly and you are in Las Vegas, for instance, and you will turn 21 at midnight, you are not going to get served until midnight Pacific Time. Doesn’t matter if it’s midnight in NJ where you may claim to have been born.
When I was younger I was in a band that traveled regionally to play at bars on the weekends (or more). We were all from Indiana which at the time did not observe Daylight Saving Time. We didn’t have any experience in setting our clocks forward and back twice a year.
We were in Peoria, Illinois one Friday on Halloween night. We thought we were done playing when we finished our third set around 1:30 AM (the bar closed at 2:00 AM).
Nope.
2:00 AM rolled around and suddenly it was 1:00 AM again. Time for us to play another set.:smack:
ETA: I’m sure this situation happens every year, everywhere that “Springs forward” and “Falls back”. I assume various states legislate this (the extra hour/bar-time thing) as they see fit. We just had never encountered it.
I was thinking of the various exceptions that do allow minors to drink alcohol in many cases.
That’s easy. They’re not the same age. But on Feb 28, they’re both under 21, and on Mar 1, they’re both 21 or older.
A lot of people are focusing on underage drinking where, yeah, whatever it says on your license is going to be how the bartender treats you.
But imagine a more weighty case. Statutory rape, maybe? Right on the time boundary. Something where the consequences are significantly bad enough to hire some good attorneys. Can they make a legal argument that someone who has been alive for less than 18 years is in fact under the age of 18? Honestly, that seems like a more sane way to determine age to me. Your age is the amount of time since you’ve been born. It doesn’t change when you cross a time zone.
