Why the hell can’t 18 year olds drink?
Because they don’t live in Australia.
Assumption 1. You enjoy the US. (For some reason. 
)
Assumption 2. You want to drink at age 18.
Solution: Move to Vermont and drive up to Montreal to party. Arrange for someone to put you up overnight. Then drive back home when you’re sober.
Easy, fast, and you get to enjoy the lovely Quebecois lads/lasses (selon tes preferences.)
You should know that crossing the border to booze is a time-honoured tradition in Canada too, especially in Ottawa. For the benefit of those who thought Canadian Bacon was a documentary, Ottawa, Ontario (our capital) is situated on the Ottawa River, which is also the border between Ontario and Quebec. Since in Ontario the drinking age is 19, and in Quebec it is 18, every Friday night hordes of high-school kids pour across the bridges into the town on the other side of the river, Hull, Quebec, which is basically the Museum of Civilization, a university, and some bars.
Yeah, I’m all about 18/19 in Canada. Going to bars in the States is a pain because you either need a fake ID (expensive to get a good one, and you’re stupid if you try using a bad one) or to find a really unscrupulous place. Either way it’s annoying.
Anyway, I recently made a trip to Niagara Falls and had a blast trying all those different drinks you see on the menus in restuarants in the States but can never get. I had a blast going to a bar and not being surrounded by underage kids trying to get trashed and hook up. I generally found people to be much more responsible there. (BTW I took the train to NF so I wasn’t driving at all in the city).
Oh yeah and Canadian beer is soooo much better than American beer.
the argument that the government can make the age whatever they want it to be (based on statistical evidence of irresponsible drinking by 18-20 year olds) doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If the government found that seniors comprised an inordinate percentage of drunk driving accidents, would it be constitutional to set a drinking age cap on seniors ase well? of course not. 18 is the age of majority, any restrictions placed on a legal adult (who can vote, register for the draft, buy tobacco, get married, etc…) based on age are agist and therefore illegal. I understand that drunk driving is a serious issue, but this soloution is subtle agist fascism, and the reason it has enjoyed the life it has is that no legislator has any real vested interest in repealing it, or associating himself/herself with such an effort. Substance control is censorship, just like book banning, it’s none of the governments business what I ingest, any more that it’s thier business what I read.
And for the record I’m 25 and didn’t drink till I was 21 and still don’t drink all that much.
Chris J
Actually I wasn’t talking about servicemen. In high school we used to go on the local base to drink, because most of the stores that sold liquor would said that the drinking age on federal terriatory was 18. I’d wouldn’t suprise me if this was a UL or wink-wink kind of arrangement, but all I know is they would sell to us, and tell us it was legal. Talking out of my ass for a moment, the fact that you say it was non-judical makes me wonder if it was service regulations, rather than fedral law.
re: The military thing
I don’t know about now, but when I was 18-20 in 79-81 and stationed in California (Ft Ord) the drinking age was 21. I remember this because in my home state of Texas it was 18 at the time. We were carded sometimes in town, but could always buy alchohol on post.(PX and EM club)
I lived in the barracks, and the sergeants never gave us shit about it, unless of course we were late for formation in the morning. I won’t go into that.
When I was in (the early 90s), the Norfolk Naval Station enlisted club enforced a strict 21-year-old rule. You got carded, your card was checked against their list of people on restriction or otherwise banned from the club, and if you were over 21, the bouncer guy put a colored bracelet around your wrist in the manner of a hospital bracelet. The colors changed each day so one person couldn’t give a bracelet to an under-21 year old. The club was privately owned and managed, which had a lot to do with that.
The captains of both ships I was stationed on also enforced the 21-year-old rule. If you came on board drunk, and you were a minor, you went to see the Old Man, guaranteed.
I think this whole thing has to be as a result of the Zero Tolerance rules for drug and alcohol abuse that the Navy enacted. The idea is to nip potential abusers in the bud before they become full-blown alcoholics and addicts. Enforcing a minimum drinking age consistent with the rest of society helps achieve that.
Robin
I was drinking at 18, and didn’t have any problem. It’s legal in lots of places.