18 Year Old drinking in US ?

ProudDUB

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

I guess the bartender has to apply the rules blindly, with zero common sense, judgement, flexibility, intelligence or taking into account the real world situation, because the person controlling him will do the exact same.
Looks like the US has finally reached the point where it is now the other way round - the rules no longer serve us, we serve the rules.
Even as a German I have to say that when it comes to being small-minded, petty, obstinate and downright cnutish when it comes to pointless enforcement of the rules, the Yanks are world-champions.
If they enforced gun security the same way, there would be no mass (or any) shootings.

I wasn't trying to "control" anyone mate. The penalties for a minor being served alcohol in your premises (and that includes someone else buying it and giving it to them) are very, very severe. Best of luck to you, being responsible for the behaviour of others in that environment.

In Georgia, you could consider yourself very, very lucky if you got off with a fine of $5000-$10,000 per incident. Penalties can range from the premises losing its license to sell alcohol for 3, 6, 12 months - which could put the average bar/pub out of business - to the owner not being able to hold a liquor license again for a period of 1, 5, 10 years which puts their ability to ever own such a business again, into question.

Is it any wonder if bar/pub owners (and by extension their managers, bar tenders, waiters and staff) have to be such hardasses about this? That is why they are so strict about everyone in your group showing ID, not just the person ordering alcohol, or paying for it. They are not following you around with binocolars all night long. They have no idea what you are going to do with the 3 beers they just served you, after you leave the bar area. That is why everyone has to show ID, regardless of how young or old you look. That is why staff can be fired if they don't ask to see it.

Whatever opinions people have about the drinking age in the US, leave your annoyance and irritation at the door and don't badger staff into serving you, or give them a hard time if they won't, despite your clearly having grey hair and a retirement plan. This is about a lot more than you and your party being inconvenienced while out for a drink. It is about people being able to hold on to their jobs. And no, I'm not being a drama queen. I know of 2 bars near my restaurant that were shut down because they lost their liquor license after an undercover sting by the locals sherrifs office. It does happen.

dr.fuzzenstein

Touched a nerve there..

shamrock55

Hazys wrote: »

This happens from time to time in Boston when in a bar with no bouncer at the door which is incredibly annoying. Last week, we were in a crowded bar and my mid-40s colleague lined up to get a round of 4 drinks, when he eventually gets served the bar tender ask for 4 ids, so he has to make his way through the crowd, collect our groups IDs, make his way back to the bar.

Then a 2nd person from our group went up to get a 2nd round, bartender asked for 4 IDs as he'd never seen the 2nd person before. He argued that we already did this but bartender didn't care so he had to go get our IDs again.

There was no 3rd round in that bar.

Why not just say the 4 drinks were for yourself

EdgeCase

Don’t even think about it. The US can be extremely serious about enforcing under 21 drinking laws and their approach to law enforcement tends to be extreme these days.

You’d be potentially facing really over the top responses, including a criminal conviction, possible deportation and banning from re-entry - more so if they pursue you for the fake ID aspect than the drinking.

It’s a very right wing country at present and one with a history of prohibition of alcohol.

RobertKK

Always important to stay within the law, but when one visits a country that isn't one's own, it is especially important to respect the local laws.

Hazys

Does anybody else feel that the overly strict rules about IDing in bars are a little bit much considering how lax the culture is on drinking driving?

Like what is the worst case scenario if you don't ID a person who is clearly in their 40s? They turn out to be a 20 year wearing a fake mustache? Jesus wept a 20 year old got a beer.

Drinking driving is rarely as enforced as IDing so people drink drive all the time. Worst case scenario of DUIs are 1000x worse than serving a 20 year old. If they spent as much energy on setting up road blocks for DUI checks instead of trying to shut down bars that accidentally served a 20 year old, i'd respect their IDing laws.

To say they got their priorities mixed up would be an understatement.


In general, I understand that bars are trying to protect their livelihood from the authorities with the messed up priorities but i can also see that certain bars take the rules too far to the point where its not enjoyable for their customers so they go to places that have common sense levels of enforcement.

wakka12

I don't know why canada/USA is so strict, it doesnt seem to be anything to do with looking young or under the legal age for drinking, middle age people are regularly carded for any alcohol purchase, when I was in vancouver many places asked anyone who looked under 40 and the drinking age is 19, safe to say not many people in their forties look anything close to 19 much less under 19. There is obviously more reasoning to it than just making sure under age people aren't drinking, possibly its to make everyone think more seriously about drinking if they're being formally Id'd and might reduce public disorder if they know alcohol related things are taken seriously, I don't know

ceadaoin.

wakka12 wrote: »

I don't know why canada/USA is so strict, it doesnt seem to be anything to do with looking young or under the legal age for drinking, middle age people are regularly carded for any alcohol purchase, when I was in vancouver many places asked anyone who looked under 40 and the drinking age is 19, safe to say not many people in their forties look anything close to 19 much less under 19. There is obviously more reasoning to it than just making sure under age people aren't drinking, possibly its to make everyone think more seriously about drinking if they're being formally Id'd and might reduce public disorder if they know alcohol related things are taken seriously, I don't know

It's because they are legally obligated to ask for id from everyone I think. If the cops raided the place and asked for everyone's id and found even a 50 year old who did not have any and therefore was not carded but still served then they will be in trouble and fined.

Fr Tod Umptious

wakka12 wrote: »

I don't know why canada/USA is so strict, it doesnt seem to be anything to do with looking young or under the legal age for drinking, middle age people are regularly carded for any alcohol purchase, when I was in vancouver many places asked anyone who looked under 40 and the drinking age is 19, safe to say not many people in their forties look anything close to 19 much less under 19. There is obviously more reasoning to it than just making sure under age people aren't drinking, possibly its to make everyone think more seriously about drinking if they're being formally Id'd and might reduce public disorder if they know alcohol related things are taken seriously, I don't know

After living in the US from my mid 20s to early 30s I was surprised when I came back home and see the amount of alcohol related disoder/incidents/behaviour, whatever you might want to call them, that happened in Ireland compared to the US.

And most of it prerptrated by young people.

Young people in the US drink underage, and it has it's consequences, but in my opionion it's far less extereme than you see here.

SHOVELLER

Hazys wrote: »

This happens from time to time in Boston when in a bar with no bouncer at the door which is incredibly annoying. Last week, we were in a crowded bar and my mid-40s colleague lined up to get a round of 4 drinks, when he eventually gets served the bar tender ask for 4 ids, so he has to make his way through the crowd, collect our groups IDs, make his way back to the bar.

Then a 2nd person from our group went up to get a 2nd round, bartender asked for 4 IDs as he'd never seen the 2nd person before. He argued that we already did this but bartender didn't care so he had to go get our IDs again.

There was no 3rd round in that bar.

Exactly why I'll never visit boston again. That kind of pettiness leaves you weary and does not happen in other cities. As said every city has a bar that will serve underage so its a case of finding out the location.
Also as mentioned their overeagerness to card versus their indifference to drink driving is puzzling.

EdgeCase

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

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After living in the US from my mid 20s to early 30s I was surprised when I came back home and see the amount of alcohol related disoder/incidents/behaviour, whatever you might want to call them, that happened in Ireland compared to the US.

And most of it prerptrated by young people.

Young people in the US drink underage, and it has it's consequences, but in my opionion it's far less extereme than you see here.

I'm not sure that has anything to do with the drinking age and enforcement of it. Ireland and the UK have a huge problem with binge drinking and the chaos that that causes every weekend and both countries are utterly blind to it too.

Plenty of other EU countries have far less strict ID and drinking laws than Ireland or Britain do, yet they don't generally have anything like the culture of getting off your face and causing mayhem every time you head out for a big night out.

It's very definitely cultural and something that isn't being tackled as it's seen as acceptable here.

The issue is more that we need to make being 'drunk and disorderly' far less socially acceptable than it is. I honestly don't see the solution being found in raising the drinking age to 21. It's more about raising the bar for what's acceptable on the streets.

If you behaved the way some people do here on the streets on a Saturday night in a lot of continental countries, you'd be dealing with the police.

EdgeCase

SHOVELLER wrote: »

Exactly why I'll never visit boston again. That kind of pettiness leaves you weary and does not happen in other cities. As said every city has a bar that will serve underage so its a case of finding out the location.
Also as mentioned their overeagerness to card versus their indifference to drink driving is puzzling.

A French family I know were treated incredibly aggressively over this kind of thing. The two parents and their adult children (in their early twenties) and there partners decided to head to states for a week as big family trip to celebrate the mother's retirement.

They were in an upper-end of mid-priced restaurant, and towards the end of dinner had a bottle of champagne on the table and decided to toast the mum's retirement.

The waitress intervened and asked to see IDs. Their son's partner took out her French ID card and she was 20.. They took the bottle of champagne off the table and ordered them out of the restaurant and when they protested about it (in confused French/English) she called the police!

They ended up getting warned and threatened with arrest for supplying drink to a 'minor' and their details taken.

The result is they'll probably never visit the US again and went home with a really bad taste in their mouth about the place. The parents now consider it a 'fascist country' and 'police state' and just badmouthed the place to anyone who was considering a holiday there that they knew.

Apparently the police kept shouting "Speak English!" at her and being extremely rude about the fact that she only spoke French.

Rented Mule

SilageIsLove wrote: »

Well, I'm heading to Chicago for 2 weeks on holiday with a pal after the leaving cert and was wondering how strictly enforced the drinking age is over there ? Will Irish bars serve Irish 18 year olds or small pubs even ? Would it be worth gettin a fake ID ?

As a native Chicagoan, you're not going to be doing much drinking over here. I'm asked for ID constantly, and I'm considerably older than 18.

Fake IDs are pretty much laughed off and confiscated. The Illinois Liquor Commission lives off of sending in underage/allegedly underage people into bars/restaurants to try to buy alcohol. I've seen quite a few shut down on the spot when catching an establishment.

Manic Moran

Hazys wrote: »

Does anybody else feel that the overly strict rules about IDing in bars are a little bit much considering how lax the culture is on drinking driving?

Like what is the worst case scenario if you don't ID a person who is clearly in their 40s? They turn out to be a 20 year wearing a fake mustache? Jesus wept a 20 year old got a beer.

Drinking driving is rarely as enforced as IDing so people drink drive all the time. Worst case scenario of DUIs are 1000x worse than serving a 20 year old. If they spent as much energy on setting up road blocks for DUI checks instead of trying to shut down bars that accidentally served a 20 year old, i'd respect their IDing laws.

To say they got their priorities mixed up would be an understatement.


In general, I understand that bars are trying to protect their livelihood from the authorities with the messed up priorities but i can also see that certain bars take the rules too far to the point where its not enjoyable for their customers so they go to places that have common sense levels of enforcement.

As mentioned before, drink driving is the precise reason these laws are in place. The US is starting to catch up, culturally, on the concept of drink (or now, stoned, unfortunately) driving, but it isn’t quite there yet. In Illinois alone (since that’s where OP wants to go), there were some 40,000 DUI arrests last year. Believe me, DUI laws are enforced, contrary to your statement. Raising the age limit to 21 did, indeed achieve a result of a reduction in drink-related accidents and injuries/deaths. I agree that the correct answer should be cultural, not an age thing, but that’s beside the point. Frankly, I don’t see this changing until self-driving cars are commonplace.

shakeitoff

U can get away with it but just depends. A bar in California frequented by Irish got destroyed one year. Might be closed down ever since.