Countries where you have to be 21 to drink alcohol...

[Ari Gold]

Any state could change their minimum legal drinking age to below 21, but above 18 but they would lose 10% of all federal highway construction funds.

In the state of Wisconsin, the WisDOT budget was $7bn, Federal funds account for $1.6bn

Also, many Wisconsin bars will serve underage drinkers if their parents are present. and in 2008 a state Rep from NW Wisconsin introduced a bill to change the legal drinking age to 18 for Military personnel

[keefe]

Any state could change their minimum legal drinking age to below 21, but above 18 but they would lose 10% of all federal highway construction funds.

In the state of Wisconsin, the WisDOT budget was $7bn, Federal funds account for $1.6bn

Also, many Wisconsin bars will serve underage drinkers if their parents are present. and in 2008 a state Rep from NW Wisconsin introduced a bill to change the legal drinking age to 18 for Military personnel

Airmen, Squids, Marines, and Joes can get served in overseas facilities at 18 if the local laws allow that. Any Swinging Richard serving his country should be able to buy a beer on base in CONUS.

[Golden Avalanche]

Beer and wine at 18.  It'd teach people how to drink and raise tolerance but not promoting young people taking shots left and right.

Considering you already posited this thought in the other drinking thread (linked by Sir Lawrence) I figured I'd just copy and paste my thoughts:


Under this, you'd still be dealing with the allure of something you can't have. After six months of drinking beer, a 19 year-old will want liquor. Plus, your tolerance isn't necessarily built across all platforms so the idea of "starting" with beers or wines and graduating to liquors as a form of cautious exposure wouldn't work for most teenagers.

You have to take the mystique out of it all for it to be handled appropriately. American society isn't built to handle this issue intelligently.

[keefe]

American society isn't built to handle this issue intelligently.

Thank you, Madison Avenue.

I re-read an excellent biography of Hirohito over the weekend and one of the most intriguing observations is that Hirohito's rehabilitation from reviled, blood-thirsty, war mongering savage to a vapid, malleable academic who had been manipulated by the military could only have been engineered by the Americans.

While the Churchill and Attlee Attlee sought Hirohito's trial as a war criminal MacArthur understood that a cornerstone of rebuilding a pro-west capitalist Japan required the continuation of the Imperial institution, albeit in a much more benign form. To recast Hirohito's role and image MacArthur brought in execs from McCann, BBDO, Leo, and  Y&R who transformed Hirohito into the docile, poem writing, marine-biologist whose intellectualism and sensitivity was essential to guide the Japanese people into a liberal democratic future.