I Think It Is Probably Best That The Drinking Age Is 21
Coming from a legal drinker at 18
When I was 18 the drinking laws in Ohio were 18+ was legal to drink 3/2 beer which probably equivalent to some of the light or low carb beers today.
The thing was, I lived in Pennsylvania which has some of the biggest restrictions on alcohol sales (except maybe Utah with the Mormons who don’t drink). You can only buy liquor from State Stores… here is a bit of the back story from Wikipedia:
Pennsylvania's complex alcohol laws can be traced back to the Prohibition era. Gifford Pinchot, who served as governor from 1923 to 1935, had a "dry" stance on alcohol. Even as Prohibition was repealed in Pinchot's second term, he maintained his tough stance on alcohol control. While Pinchot eventually came around to the idea of repeal, he believed strongly that the best way to prevent corruption in the alcohol industry was through state control. The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board was created to license establishments, set serving hours, and regulate prices.
So what is an 18 year old pair of friends to do when it is illegal to drink in their state?
Well Suzy and I would jump in her fancy-pants Pontiac Firebird and drive 45 minutes over the state line to a bar conveniently located just over the border (as one does)!
But given the fact that we lived at home and at least one of us had a curfew (I don’t think it was me, my parents barely knew I existed) we would drive hell-bent-for-leather back over the causeway to get home by midnight, at least sloshed, and slide into home just in time to avoid getting GROUNDED!
If you still have the possibility of getting grounded, maybe you shouldn’t be in a bar drinking until midnight, just saying!
But wait, it gets better!
Ohio started thinking, hey maybe we should raise the drinking age to 19, but I was grandfathered in because I was already a bar fly. And then they raised it again to 21 and I was grandfathered again!
Good times for sure!
And even better, sometimes we would drive 4 hours to Canada where we could drink liquor legally at 19!
So anyways, I guess I am happy that my kid can’t drive to the edge Florida and drink over the line in Georgia… too many things could go wrong!
How old were you when it was first legal for you to drink? Leave me a comment and let me know!
Oops… 18 is still the legal age over here (the Netherlands) and when I grew up it was 16! Besides the age, the biggest difference is that ID is actually checked nowadays. It is hard to get alcohol when you are younger. Hard, but not impossible. Back in the day nobody cared about that. I don’t even remember carrying any ID with me… only when we left the country. So I could go in a bar and order a beer when I was 14. And I did. Or I could go and buy a bottle of wine in the supermarket. Even heavy drinks like whiskey were easy to get. If anyone asked about it you simply said it was for your mom or dad. My parents knew and didn’t do anything about it. In fact they gave me alcohol when I wanted. Even at a very young age I could take a sip from their glasses whenever I asked. And I never abused alcohol. (Well, that’s a lie, I got really drunk once in my life when I was twenty-something…) I absolutely got tipsy more than once, but that was it. I guess it wasn’t exciting because it wasn’t forbidden or something like that. My girls are 18+ and drink alcohol sometimes. My boys are 18- and don’t like it. They sure have tasted, but just don’t like it. Yet. We do talk about it often. And they also talk about alcohol and drug in school. What I didn’t know when I grew up was the amount of damage alcohol can do to young brains (amongst others). My kids do. I think being open about it helps them making smart choices. Everything secret and forbidden works like a magnet.
Tara - I was raised by two committed daily drinkers*. Both I and my dog had alcohol when we were puppies. There are bits in our culture that get more gravity than they deserve...alcohol is one of them. It's so "forbidden" that it becomes the fruit in the tree that everybody wants to pick. Alcohol was always available without repercussion,so it was only periodically appealing. I think it's the fence around it that makes it first-level compelling. And then, the disrupted mental state it provides. The hang over the next day never seems to be enough of a warning to not do it again. I have a few fun/funny stories about young consumption. In the larger context of my life I only tell them when they need to serve as a warning to others. * more commonly called alcoholics.