Next up: the Netherlands, nine in ten teenagers cycling home at night with no lights and no care in the world.
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025
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So? Not everyone has the USโs prohibition fetish.
I haven't been to France that much but I believe a serious part of all french people consider drinking wine so much part of 'good culture' they really don't think you should limit underage drinking entirely. More like, you're 15 so you can only have one glass. But that might be based on a stereotype so please respond if you disagree this is a thing.
The thing is that people who want to will drink regardless. If it's entirely illegal, they'll do it in secret. If it's legal, there is at least some chance of supervision. Just look how Americans behave the moment they turn 21. And what they will do to get alcohol when younger. (forged identity documents for example, having a fake ID document is considered pretty normal among US teenagers) That's what you get for infantilising your youths and young adults and banning them from drinking entirely.
Drinking culture from my understanding is similar or worse in the UK, and they can start drinking earlier. So this can't be the only factor leading to that behavior.
Also most people here, from my impression, that so have a problem start drinking early.
I actually think nowadays that this is one of the things the US does right. Prohibition was too ambitious, but they at least had good intentions (e.g. lower violence against women, which it achieved)
Edit: getting some nice downvotes. Here is a quote from a study that looked at the issue:
Comparing our findings to the US literature, we find that the jump in binge drinking at the low MLDA (minimum legal drinking age) of 16 in Austria is about 25 percent larger than the jump at the MLDA of 21 in the US. At the same time the binge drinking incidence for teenagers slightly below the MLDA cutoffs is clearly higher in Austria than in the US (in Austria, the incidence below the age-16 cutoff is 50 percent, in the US it is 33 percent below the age-21 cutoff). This pattern speaks against the argument that a low MLDA helps teenagers to ease into drinking and consume alcohol responsibly (Wechsler and Nelson, 2006).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629621001569
Yeah well tbf the age is 18 in france. Just come across the switzerland the age is 16 there.
Some retailers where I live in Normandy just sell to whoever, no questions asked. Bars serve too.
It isn't a little sip of wine either. The shop across the street from a middle school sells kids vodka at lunch time and these kids get shitfaced. Same for cigarettes at the tobacco shops.
I get what some people are saying, that it is a right of passage and stuff, and that the drinking culture is different here, but these kids are binge-drinking at lunch. We also have loads of CBD shops now that sell pre-rolls. They won't get stoned, but it isn't healthy.
I suspect that it is closer to 99% of shops doing this in larger areas.
I did ask a shop owner about this. He will ask for ID, his wife too, but he can't get his employees to always do it. The main factor for him is that if they refuse they might steal it.
Anyway, as a Canadian who has lived here for 20 years, I am still shocked whenever I see this especially when I get carded in Canada when I buy alcohol (not because I look young, it is just store policy where I come from).