What is this misdemeanour of supplying alcohol to a minor? Surely it doesn't apply to parents or family giving alcohol to the children does it? Or does it ? What is the age limit for 'minor' in this case?
On this topic what is the US law about alcohol and minors in restaurants? Does everyone at table have to be 21 or 18, or whatever the age is,in any given state, before they can all take wine or spirits with the meal? If not then isn't there a problem enforcing the law? Supppose I am at dinner in a restaurant in the US with my seventeen year old and her young friends, can I not let them drink alcohol at at table?
And what about bars? Are under 21s/ under 18s not allowed into bars, or are they allowed in but not to be served alcohol? ********************************************************** 06-05-05, 08:41 AM Fritzzs In the US, it is against the law for ANYONE to supply alcohol to any minor reguardless if they are the parents or not ! It makes no difference what so ever where it takes place- resturants,bars, home, etc....
Needless to say , many parents will let their offspring have alcohol at home under supervision.. Usually wine at dinner..
Some states have an age limit of 18, while most are 21..Yes, underager's can go into resturants that serve alchol, and some states even bars, but not be served...
And would you believe, that there are some counties that are still "dry"??? Not even adults can buy alcohol...Of course they just drive to another county close by.... Thats usually in the bible belt area of the US...
No doubt it is totally different in Europe.. I know it is in France.
I grew up in Central America and if you were tall enough to put your money on the bar, you could get a drink... In high school and college down there, I do not know of ANY instance where there were a problem of teens drinking and having problems.. We would go to bars, have a few drinks and a good time without any problems...Of course that was a different era were common sence prevailed...( even in the young)
06-05-05, 10:48 AM methos Once again, and I know this is odd to you Brits, this varies by state. In Wisconsin, for example, minors may consume alcohol in a bar/restaurant as long as their parents are present, but this is against the law in most states.
Alcohol consumption is a matter of state law rather than federal, but the federal government has gotten their way with it by making funding (I think it was highway funding, specificall, but I am not sure on that) conditional. on the state's drinking age being 21. Because of this, all states now have a drinking age of 21, but they used to vary. States still have their own twists on it, like Wisconsin.
06-05-05, 12:43 PM FredPuli " Odd to you Brits" You bet. It all is! The law is just being revised to be made less restrictive. The main change is the removal of official hours of opening.So licensees can open their premises to serve alcohol 24 hours a day, if they so wish, not shut their pubs at 11pm.The argument is that closing at a set hour means that all the drinkers rush to get more booze inside themselves in the last half hour. The result is a whole load of drunks emerging on to our streets all at once. This change is supposed to remove this 'eleven o' clock swill'
That said the minimum age at which a child may be allowed alcoholic drink, whether at home or in a restaurant is and was (guess Smile )......five years of age. Note that the child cannot itself order alcohol at that age (oh, good ! ) but any person over 18 accompanying it may do so and serve the child.
The child itself, unaccompanied by any adult, could order alcohol with a meal in a restaurant at 16 provided that the alcohol was beer, cider or perry (cider made from pears) and, in Scotland, wine. (This is something that is being changed, as its anomolous)
A person of 18 is an adult, of course.Only someone of 18 can order drink in a bar but they can enter from 14; special rules apply where a pub has declared an area a 'family area'. There any child can enter provided it is with adults but these areas are closed to children from 8pm.
The minimum age for buying alcohol in a shop is 18 .
In France? Nobody is allowed into a bar until they are 16, unless accompanied by their parent or guardian. There are no age limits in restaurants.
We do understand local variations, to a degree. The magistrates for a county could have local, minor, variations on opening hours and at one time, in some counties of Wales, pubs were shut on Sundays. The last such county voted to remove that restriction about twenty years ago.
I should add that our teenagers and youngsters generally consume far more alcohol than their contemporaries in other European countries. The reason seems to be cultural. It appears to be part of life for them to get out together and down as much booze as possible in an evening. This is not a feature of French life or Italian life, for example. It seems possible that that is a result of their not being brought up with alcohol at table every day of their lives.They are not adjusted to seeing adults drink spirits either, that being something done in pubs and bars, so it is an adventure for them.
What has long been of interest is that the amount of alcohol related deaths and diseases is not in any strict correlation with the consumption or availability of alcoholic drink. So Greece for example, has a very low incidence whereas Nordic countries, strict rules, heavy taxation, restricted access and all, have high incidence.
Many night clubs have cover (admittance) charges. A patron has his or her hand stamped as proof of payment. 18, 19 and 20 year olds are allowed into many of these bars, but are stamped in a different color to indicate their inability to purchase alcohol.
This would not by typical of a neighborhood type of bar or pool hall. Many of these will admit people of all ages (serviced by their restaurant) and simply ask for identification if eligibility to purchase alcohol is in question.
My state sees no difference in the type of spirit consumed . Do I recall an advertisement years ago explaining that a beer, a glass of wine, and a mixed drink all contain about the same amount of alcohol?
If you bring your 17 year old and her friends, have a blast - but don't order alcohol out! When in Rome...
06-06-05, 02:26 AM FredPuli The quaint distinction whereby a 16 year old could order only cider, beer or perry with a meal, is a concession to thirsty workers and is historic.Years ago workers would take ale or beer with their food, not water. In the West Country, where cider is the local drink and drunk as much as beer, they would take that instead. A child can start full- time work at 16 so we may guess that the law was written to enable all workers to drink the same.Probably when the age was 14 the law had that drink limit at 14, which, interestingly, remained the age at which the youngster could enter a bar unaccompanied
The addition of wine in Scotland seems to be a supplement of recent date and for the convenience of youngsters in restaurants. (Scotland has its own laws )
History explains two other oddities of drinking here in the UK. (1) You don't tip bar staff. You say " Have one for yourself", meaning " Have a drink on me". The barman may take a drink and charge you for it or he may take the money from you and say " I'll take one for later". He won't. He'll keep the money in a beer glass behind the bar. This strange ritual is because it was illegal for anyome other than the bar owner to pay the staff their salary or any part of it. A cash tip was deemed paying the staff something towards their salary. Buying them a drink was not. So we say " Have one for yourself"...
(2) There is no legal measure for brandy. It's because it is served as a one -off at the end of a restaurant meal, not as a regular session drink in as pub, as whisky, gin and rum are.It was thought that gentlemen who could afford a restaurant meal with a brandy at the end needed no protection against short measures ! SmileThe ordinary pub drinker, drinking the other spirits did .
06-06-05, 12:52 PM aminator2002
quote: The main change is the removal of official hours of opening.So licensees can open their premises to serve alcohol 24 hours a day, if they so wish, not shut their pubs at 11pm.
Well that is good news! I hate that rule... very inconvenient for people who don't know the ins and outs of where to go out in the UK. 11pm is embarrassingly early IMHO.
06-06-05, 01:14 PM Georgia85 In GA you can have sex at 16. You can buy tobacco and smoke at 18. But you can't buy alcohol or drink until you are 21.
06-06-05, 06:24 PM FredPuli Odd these rules ! My girl 'celebrated' her sixteenth by going out and buying herself a lottery ticket. She could also then buy a can of aerosol paint, or a butane refill for a cigarette lighter, the cigarettes too, and even some kinds of knife for the first time.(In case you are wondering, the age limit for the sale of aerosol paint is supposed to reduce the amount of graffiti around Big Grin )
06-06-05, 08:35 PM Sarai That aerosol paint can law is brilliant! Seriously, the combination of teenagers without anything to do and aerosol paint is, quite frankly, demoralizing. It's like the broken couch in The Bluest Eye. You start off with all these high ideals, and then wham, the couch is broken or, in this case, the walls are sprayed and no one has the time or money to fix it (or they do fix it, but it just keeps happening AGAIN), and then everyone loses their vision and no one gives a hoot about the place any more. You Brits aren't too shabby. Wink
06-07-05, 08:10 AM aminator2002 Spray paint is not even sold within the city limits of Chicago. I would make fun of laws about spray paint, but the amount of graffiti has gone down so substantially that I can't complain a bit.
06-07-05, 09:30 AM Sarai I hope it didn't sound like I was making fun of the law. I really think it's smart. Where I live, new neighborhoods are built and just as you start to think, "This is going to be a really nice place for people to live," some kid spray paints illegible scribbles all over the side of three or four houses. Frown Long live laws about spray paint!
06-07-05, 12:06 PM FredPuli Sarai: "You Brits aren't too shabby". You haven't been speaking to my family, obviously: there are exceptions , one at least Wink. Apart from referring to our state of dress,though, does this have some other meaning? The M-W dictionary at top didn't help.
06-07-05, 12:22 PM DorianGreyed "Not too shabby" is an Americanism meaning the opposite of what it seems. It's similar to "not a bad idea," used when someone comes up with a good idea.
06-07-05, 02:40 PM FredPuli Let me guess. The opposite of 'not too shabby' is 'not too smart' or 'none too smart' ? Confused Neat.
That last is a current British expression. It's interesting because 'smart' in British English has lost the everyday meaning of 'clever', which it once had.Its standard meaning is now only as in 'smart clothes' though horseracing people, in the special vocabulary of the turf ,may still say a good, capable, horse is a 'smart performer'. So it's a word with a meaning , like some others e.g 'proof' in 'proof of the pudding' and 'prove' in 'the exception proves the rule', found only in phrases now.
06-07-05, 03:52 PM babthrower Originally posted by FredPuli:
"[example] ... 'the exception proves the rule'..."
AAAARRRRRRGH!! You have set me off! That is one of my most hated phrases. The exception does not prove the rule. It disproves the rule -- in logic, at any rate. There may be some weird domain in which the statement is true, some alternate reality, but that reality is not the one which rational people inhabit.
I know you didn't say it was a true phrase, Fred, I just wish you hadn't said it at all. Roll Eyes
06-07-05, 04:04 PM Fritzzs Fred, if you were use to riding and driving a wreck of a '68 Ford Escort, and then got inside a Rolls Royce, seeing it expensive interrior, its fine opulence, an American might murmer under his breath, "Not too shabby"....
06-07-05, 06:49 PM FredPuli Babs. No AAAARGH needed! 'Prove' and 'proof' were chosen because they are not now regularly used in one of their meanings, whether in the US or UK, just as 'smart' isn't regularly used here in one of its.
The exception does prove the rule Smile.It really does. One meaning of prove was 'test'. Webster's Unabridged Dictionary gives it thus " 4. To subject to a test, experiment,comparison, analysis, or the like, to determine quality , amount, acceptability, characteristics etc " So if there is a rule and an exception appears to be outside it, then that exception does test, does prove the rule, that is, it tests how good the rule is . It may be that the exception is more apparent than real or it may be that the rule must be modified to cover it or the rule might be shown useless. Anyway it has been proved, tested.
Proof has the same meaning of 'test'. Webster again:" The act of testing or making trial of anything; test;trial; [example: to put a thing to the proof ]" Something is put to proof; it is put to the test. A proof house is a place where guns are tested. A charge in the barrel is set to see whether the barrel bursts or not. It doesn't prove, provide proof, that the item is a gun, just tests how sound a gun it is. If the barrel remains unharmed then we might say "Further proof is unnecessary"
06-07-05, 07:26 PM babthrower Supplying alcohol to minors FredPuli says:
"The exception ... tests how good the rule is . It may be that the exception is more apparent than real or it may be that the rule must be modified to cover it or the rule might be shown useless."
You have saved me a great many arrrrgh's, Fred, one for each time I hear some a*****e say, "Ah, but the negative case you cite only proves that I was right when I said all Jews are color-blind. That you say, "Well, Len is a Jew, and he's not color-blind", is the exception that proves the rule."
Now I will say, 'That exception tests the rule -- and finds it wanting.'
So thanks, Fred.
06-07-05, 08:48 PM DorianGreyed And then we have alcohol, which may be 100 proof. The liquor has been tested and found to be 50% alcohol. Thus, 80 proof is 40% alcohol, 90 proof is 45%, etc.
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