An undercover investigation has found that major supermarket chains across France are still selling alcohol to minors, breaking the law meant to protect underage drinkers.
Drinking culture from my understanding is similar or worse in the UK, and they can start drinking earlier. So this can’t be the only factor leading to that behavior.
Also most people here, from my impression, that so have a problem start drinking early.
I actually think nowadays that this is one of the things the US does right. Prohibition was too ambitious, but they at least had good intentions (e.g. lower violence against women, which it achieved)
Edit: getting some nice downvotes. Here is a quote from a study that looked at the issue:
Comparing our findings to the US literature, we find that the jump in binge drinking at the low MLDA (minimum legal drinking age) of 16 in Austria is about 25 percent larger than the jump at the MLDA of 21 in the US. At the same time the binge drinking incidence for teenagers slightly below the MLDA cutoffs is clearly higher in Austria than in the US (in Austria, the incidence below the age-16 cutoff is 50 percent, in the US it is 33 percent below the age-21 cutoff). This pattern speaks against the argument that a low MLDA helps teenagers to ease into drinking and consume alcohol responsibly (Wechsler and Nelson, 2006).
Drinking culture from my understanding is similar or worse in the UK, and they can start drinking earlier. So this can’t be the only factor leading to that behavior.
Also most people here, from my impression, that so have a problem start drinking early.
I actually think nowadays that this is one of the things the US does right. Prohibition was too ambitious, but they at least had good intentions (e.g. lower violence against women, which it achieved)
Edit: getting some nice downvotes. Here is a quote from a study that looked at the issue:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629621001569