> We have a long tradition of this with our 21-year drinking age. People can differentiate between the laws they can break and the ones they shouldn’t.
Well, not really. It was originally 18 to drink.
Thanks to the federal government linking interstate funds to a requirement states support 21 drinking age is how they did that.
In some states, even 16 could drink beer prior to the feds fucking things up.
> In some states, even 16 could drink beer prior to the feds fucking things up.
That's one thing I always found funny when looking at the US as a european. When I had my first legal beer as a sixteen year old I remembered that I would only be allowed to do this in the US in five more years. Of course the actual first beer was drank when I was fifteen.
What I always wondered - In countries where beer is allowed at sixteen, people usually try it when fifteen, because doing forbidden things is obviously cool during this age. But in the US, do kids start illegaly drinking when they're twenty, or do y'all also start experimenting earlier?
EDIT: Also love the fact that 18 year olds in the US can join the military, yet aren't allowed to drink a beer until three years later.
I see, that does make sense. American kids must feel even more badass then, considering that they're doing something 5-6 years earlier than they'd be allowed to :)
18 year olds in the military can’t buy beer, absolutely nobody cares if they drink it or not. In the whole time I was in not a single person got in trouble for the drinking but for whatever stupid things they did while drinking.
And it’s because they make you follow the local laws, when we were down in Panama the officers all chipped in and bought us a shitton of beer on our last night there. There was another time at Ft Bragg where they were like “anyone not over 21 can’t drink” and then just walked away leaving us with another shitton of beer.
I'm sure that they do drink it, what I meant was the weird logic of a government restricting drinking to 21 but allowing military at 18. Essentially the US government thinks that beer is more dangerous to 18 year olds than the military?
I think the answer to this question depends on ones personal ideology. I don't think that this is my governments first goal or reason, but I also don't think that it's not doing that at all.
If you're more of a libertarian kind of person we will probably have different views on this, it also strongly depends on where you're from.
To make an example, the EU at least tries to protect it's citizens in regard to data privacy and ownership, so there's one example.
I think our government protects us precisely the bare minimum needed to avoid a general riot, and no more.
100% most definitely they don't protect us in any way wrt data privacy, but that's only because the average person thinks they "have nothing to hide" so they can get away with it due to general apathy/ignorance.
The only place I do feel they protect us is in consumer protections, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if there were plans underway to change those.
Well, not really. It was originally 18 to drink.
Thanks to the federal government linking interstate funds to a requirement states support 21 drinking age is how they did that.
In some states, even 16 could drink beer prior to the feds fucking things up.