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Subject: Re: Comparison of alcohol (ab)use in various countries/continents.
From: JMeer
Posted: Thu Jan 6. 2000, 23:53 UTC
Followup to: "Comparison of alcohol (ab)use in various countries/continents."  by Mike E  (Thu Jan 6. 2000, 21:33 UTC)
> Hopefully my experiences give an idea of what I'm looking for. Trends 
> in alcohol debut age, alcohol availability, "outdoor" vs. "indoor" 
> drinking, and maybe even some insights in why people where you live 
> drink as they do. My focus is the alcohol use/abuse in the younger 
> (underage) population.
> I hope this wont be too much trouble.
> 
> Hoping to hear from you,
> 
> Mike. 
Mike-
I am a 19 year old college student in New Jersey, USA; thus, I am underage. 
With all due to respect to the grayer, wiser heads here (who might be able to 
offer an idea of what life was like in the golden days when the drinking age 
was 18), I've probably got the best handle on what's going on right now from 
the underage perspective.
For those who are under-21, alcohol offers a paradox:
1) It is incredibly easy to procure
2) It is incredibly hard to buy
You will almost certainly get carded if you look under 25. In New Jersey, the 
fine for selling to a minor is $1000 and the possible loss of your liquor 
license. No $15 case of beer is worth that to any businessman. On the other 
hand, if you have a decent looking fake driver's license, you should be able 
to buy. 
In my town, most of my friends started drinking in their junior year of high 
school, or around 16 or 17 years old. This is more because the driving age in 
NJ is 17 (now 18 for kids born after '84), so you really oculdn't go to any 
parties (and spend the night) until you could drive, because it's not cool to 
pull up to a party with Mom. As long as one person has a decent fake ID, there 
will be booze at the party. Those who have older friends start drinking 
earlier because they're exposed to it more.
Drinking is always done indoors (or at venues like concerts where nobody 
cares) because many cops are assholes and it's not worth the hassle. 
Generally, public drunkenness citations run between $100 and $500.
People in my town drink the way they do because we live in suburbia and 
there's nothing to do. There are no clubs, no centers for youth. So, when 
someone's folks are out of town, we congregate there and drink. Welcome to 
America.
As for college, I think Princeton is very different from most schools. Almost 
every university is cracking down on drinking after some well-publicized 
deaths, including six at a school in Virginia in the last two years and one at 
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a few years back at a fraternity 
party. However, because princeton's social scene revolves around the 'eating 
clubs' (sort of a combination of a co-ed fraternity and an English gentleman's 
club) which are on private property and technically unaffiliated with the 
university, Princeton is having a hard time cracking down drinking. They did 
make the penalties for procuring and public possession of alcohol stiffer, 
but it's still legal to have stuff in your room as long as you're not serving 
anyone under 21. Thus, I have a fine bar and a collection of good beers in my 
room.
While other schools have gone as far as to punish people for empty 
containers, you can't get hassled at the eating clubs. Drunkenness is not 
against the rules, and if you're taken to the university infirmary for being 
drunk, you don't get in trouble. This is important because otherwise people 
might refuse treatment and die because they didn't want to get in trouble.
While the University's Alcohol Initiative has been making a lot of noise 
about toning down hte eating clubs and providing non-alcoholic events, these 
have been failures thus far. In one well-publicized incident, a heavily 
advertised university-sponsored dance on a particular saturday night known for 
big parties garnered a healthy fifteen or twenty people (out of a student body 
of 4,500). Moreover, if we didn't have the eating clubs, which are within 10 
minutes walk of any point on campus, people would drink hard liquor in dorm 
rooms or drive to bars;  this would cause an increase in serious alcohol 
poisonings and drunk driving. Smart kids don't necessarily make smart 
decisions.  Also, it's a lot harder to kill yourself with beer than it is with 
hard liquor. The beer served at the clubs is generally of ahigher caliber than 
that served at fraternities at other schools (which also serve abysmal and 
dangerous punches that are responsible for most of these alcohol poisoning 
cases).  It's not uncommon to have Killian's Red on tap, and hard cider is 
plentiful, not to mention delicious. One club usually has Yuengling Black & 
Tan on tap and last year another club had a 'Pub Night' with kegs of Guinness 
Stout, Bass, and Guinness Black & Tan.
Well, that's all I can think of. Hope it's been useful. I'll leave the 
historical background to the old timers (sorry, guys).
meer


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