Where I live in Western Europe beer is legal at 16 and hard liquor at 18. Illegal alcohol is close to non existent. You get the occasional hobby brewer and that’s about it. There’s a little crime in fake expensive liquor but even that is occasional.
What you noticed is what we see here with tobacco though. They keep trying to phase it away by increasing taxes and upping the age limit from 16 to 18. They’re also trying to ban e-liquid flavors. But what really happens is that there are now a lot of illegal cigarettes and vapes making their way to teenagers. Not to mention stuff like unregulated THC vapes that actually contain synthetic weed and can be extremely dangerous.
Norway here. We have 18 and 20. The kids aren’t drinking the same way we did now though. They start later and not as heavily. I think that is a good thing. But yeah, I guess you have a point. We drank more and more beer and wine as well, if we could get hold of it. But money was an important factor. Moonshine was so much cheaper. A bottle of the stuff and half a liter of soda and you had enough for the entire night. So I think I would have chosen it a lot anyway before I got older and had more of a disposable income.
Where I live in Western Europe beer is legal at 16 and hard liquor at 18. Illegal alcohol is close to non existent. You get the occasional hobby brewer and that’s about it. There’s a little crime in fake expensive liquor but even that is occasional.
What you noticed is what we see here with tobacco though. They keep trying to phase it away by increasing taxes and upping the age limit from 16 to 18. They’re also trying to ban e-liquid flavors. But what really happens is that there are now a lot of illegal cigarettes and vapes making their way to teenagers. Not to mention stuff like unregulated THC vapes that actually contain synthetic weed and can be extremely dangerous.
Governments have always been making things worse.
Norway here. We have 18 and 20. The kids aren’t drinking the same way we did now though. They start later and not as heavily. I think that is a good thing. But yeah, I guess you have a point. We drank more and more beer and wine as well, if we could get hold of it. But money was an important factor. Moonshine was so much cheaper. A bottle of the stuff and half a liter of soda and you had enough for the entire night. So I think I would have chosen it a lot anyway before I got older and had more of a disposable income.