What if you go back in time and impersonate someone from the future?
Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen: What’s your name, dude?
Marty McFly: Uh, Mar- Eastwood. Clint Eastwood.
Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen: What kind of stupid name is that?
Stranger
This was actually something of a small scandal back when I was in college.
A bunch of college kids – 18-, 19, and 20-years-old – took the new (at the time) light rail down to the border, walked across, and headed for the tourist-oriented bars in Tijuana. At the time, the age-limit for consumption of alcohol was 18 in Mexico (I’m not sure what it is now). When the kids crossed the border heading north there was a cadre of local police officers waiting to welcome them back to the United States, whereupon they arrested everyone in the group for being drunk in public – oh, and for being intoxicated minors because the legal age-limit for consuming alcohol is 21# in California.
The little sting operation made campus news largely because the trip was arranged by and for one of the social organizations on campus and the mass arrest of the students earned headlines in the campus* newspaper. There were rumors that the whole sting operation had been crafted by the father of one of the kids, who knew the charges wouldn’t stick but wanted to teach his daughter not to disobey his orders not to go drinking with her hooligan friends. Students spent a couple weeks writing letters-to-the-editor to voice their opinions on police jurisdiction, age-limits for alcohol consumption, the ethics and morality of going to someone else’s country to misbehave and vomit, et cetera, et cetera and, eventually, something more important (like the March Madness brackets) gained more attention and coverage.
I don’t believe I paid enough attention to the matter to know how it resolved%.
My point is that the students were legally allowed to drink and get drunk in Mexico but got detained on alcohol-related charges once they set foot back on US soil. Had they gotten into cars (there was a massive parking lot connected to the light rail terminal) they would have been hit with DUI or DWI charges. The question of jurisdiction and applicability of charges arose because they were merely inebriated but had not consumed the alcohol in a place where it was illegal and, the students claimed, they might have been drunk in public but had not been disorderly.
–G!
#With exceptions for 17-year-old active military personnel with valid ID’s. There’s an understanding that if you’re qualified to join the corps of citizens who are risking their lives to charge into war, you’re qualified to get plastered with your buddies when you’re all on leave.
*Though I don’t recall the city’s regular newspaper bothering to mention the matter.
%It probably got thrown out, with warnings to both father and daughter and dismissive hand-waving toward his colleagues and her friends.
My guess is that you’re recalling the story incorrectly. There’s no such charge in CA and I doubt that there ever was.
An “understanding”? You used a # to refer back to a legal age limit, so it seems you’re making a legal claim. Never in your lifetime was it legal to drink off base with at 17 with a military ID if the drinking age was higher than 17 (everywhere in the US).