Beer and whines
Tuesday, 1. August 2006, 01:06:34
Norway has a law about alcohol that makes it legal for 18 year olds to drink, but until they are 20 they can only have beer or cider (or those over-priced drinks with a tiny bit of alcohol and a lot of sugar) under 4.7% alcohol content. In a bar, they cannot be at a table that has anything else on it.
This has the effect of encouraging 18 year old kids to drink privately instead (or semi-privately, say illegally in the park where everyone else drinks too). It also means that many or perhaps most bars will not let people between 18 and 20 in, because there is too great a risk that they will sit at a table, and someone else will turn up with a glass of wine. This is enough for a bar to be closed down for a few weeks at least.
I recently watched a 19-year old go to a bar, politely offer his ID to the woman working there (who is not much older herself), and therefore be refused the right to sit quietly at the bar and have a beer. It isn't something that makes anyone feel great - neither the staff (who are not given to filling young people with too much drink in this case), nor the person in question, nor those who are around.
Age limits are always arbitrary. But this policy seems worse than most. It doesn't stop young people from getting drunk as fools every friday and saturday night, it just reminds them that they are still excluded from being regarded as adults by providing powerful incentives for venues to do the exclusion.
Bars are not, in my experience, the greatest repository of moral guidance one could encounter. On the other hand, nor are they inexperienced with people who drinnk alcohol, nor blind to the dangers and problems that can entail, nor filled with people who have no sympathy or disregard for their customers.
Supermarkets (which sell all the alcohol that an 18 or 19 year old can legally drink) are not terrible places either. But there is a almost total lack of relationship between a supermarket and their customers - certainly nothing that would make me happy that my kids were buying alcohol there instead of going to a bar, where at least they will be stopped from buying alcohol if they drink "too much".
Today is the nominal birthday of horses. It is also the birthday of a colleague who will come to Norway soon. If he figures it out, I'll buy him a drink. 20 is old enough to have a glass of wine, I reckon.
This has the effect of encouraging 18 year old kids to drink privately instead (or semi-privately, say illegally in the park where everyone else drinks too). It also means that many or perhaps most bars will not let people between 18 and 20 in, because there is too great a risk that they will sit at a table, and someone else will turn up with a glass of wine. This is enough for a bar to be closed down for a few weeks at least.
I recently watched a 19-year old go to a bar, politely offer his ID to the woman working there (who is not much older herself), and therefore be refused the right to sit quietly at the bar and have a beer. It isn't something that makes anyone feel great - neither the staff (who are not given to filling young people with too much drink in this case), nor the person in question, nor those who are around.
Age limits are always arbitrary. But this policy seems worse than most. It doesn't stop young people from getting drunk as fools every friday and saturday night, it just reminds them that they are still excluded from being regarded as adults by providing powerful incentives for venues to do the exclusion.
Bars are not, in my experience, the greatest repository of moral guidance one could encounter. On the other hand, nor are they inexperienced with people who drinnk alcohol, nor blind to the dangers and problems that can entail, nor filled with people who have no sympathy or disregard for their customers.
Supermarkets (which sell all the alcohol that an 18 or 19 year old can legally drink) are not terrible places either. But there is a almost total lack of relationship between a supermarket and their customers - certainly nothing that would make me happy that my kids were buying alcohol there instead of going to a bar, where at least they will be stopped from buying alcohol if they drink "too much".
Today is the nominal birthday of horses. It is also the birthday of a colleague who will come to Norway soon. If he figures it out, I'll buy him a drink. 20 is old enough to have a glass of wine, I reckon.
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And you are right, young people DO get drunker than drunk very often. I'm often wondering when my 13 year old sister is going to start... I just turned 18, so I know how easy it is to get your hands on alcoholic beverages when you are under 18. I don't mind the age limit, and it should be harder to get any alcohol when you are under 18. There's a law saying that you can carry around on beverages with an alcoholic percent of up to 20% when you are 16, as long as the bottles are unopened. Who with their mind on the right place thinks that a 16 year old won't drink what he's got in the bottles as soon as he get's indoor?
By the way, I'm starting to work at a food store today, and I'm absolutely sure that there will be teens under 18 trying to buy alcohol, either without ID, hoping I won't ask them for it, or with a fake one.
And since I just turned 18, you're probably wondering if I drank alcohol when I was under 18 as well, and yes I did. But in very small amounts compared to many others. It's more of a social thing for me, and a cold beer on a summer night is good.
EDIT:
I'm from Norway, btw.
By PaiTrakt, # 1. August 2006, 06:11:23
Here in Lithuania, everybody is allowed to enter bars.
By Ramunas, # 1. August 2006, 07:23:37