Alcohol Consumption By Youth In The United States
Alcohol consumption by youth in the United States of America is an umbrella term for alcohol consumption by minors and adults under 21 years of age across the country.
Although the minimum legal age to purchase alcohol is 21 in all states (see National Minimum Drinking Age Act), the legal details vary greatly. While a few states completely ban alcohol usage for people under 21, the majority have exceptions that permit consumption.
Underage drinking has become an activity primarily done behind closed doors. Typically, underage drinkers hide their alcohol consumption by drinking quickly before they go out which is often referred to as pregaming or pre-partying. Brittany Levine explained in her article “Pre-Partying” in the USA Today newspaper that, “of all drinking events involving pre-partying, 80% involved additional drinking afterward.” Those who oppose a complete ban on underage drinking argue that it is important that minors be introduced to alcohol in a controlled environment, so that supervision and guidance might occur instead of experimentation. Some parents are willing to provide alcohol for their children if they drink it in a controlled environment. Furnishing alcohol to one's own children is permitted in 31 states, while it's illegal to do so for other people's children in all 50 states. Social host ordinances have been enacted in a number of jurisdictions to attempt to limit the parties where adults may permit minors to drink. Social host laws or ordinances have proliferated in the last 10 years because it has been too difficult for law enforcement to prove which adult(s) furnished or served alcohol to minors in their own home, so it permits them to cite or arrest the adult who has control of the premises.
Read more about Alcohol Consumption By Youth In The United States: Controversies, Alcohol Access By Minors, Prevention Programs, Motivations, Arguments
Famous quotes containing the words united states, alcohol, consumption, youth, united and/or states:
“In one notable instance, where the United States Army and a hundred years of persuasion failed, a highway has succeeded. The Seminole Indians surrendered to the Tamiami Trail. From the Everglades the remnants of this race emerged, soon after the trail was built, to set up their palm-thatched villages along the road and to hoist tribal flags as a lure to passing motorists.”
—For the State of Florida, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“So it is with books, for the most part: they work no redemption on us. The bookseller might certainly know that his customers are in no respect better for the purchase and consumption of his wares. The volume is dear at a dollar, and after to reading to weariness the lettered backs, we leave the shop with a sigh, and learn, as I did without surprise of a surly bank director, that in bank parlors they estimate all stocks of this kind as rubbish.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We too are ashes as we watch and hear
The psalm, the sorrow, and the simple praise
Of one whose promised thoughts of other days
Were such as ours, but now wholly destroyed,
The service record of his youth wiped out,
His dream dispersed by shot, must disappear.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)
“In the United States all business not transacted over the telephone is accomplished in conjunction with alcohol or food, often under conditions of advanced intoxication. This is a fact of the utmost importance for the visitor of limited funds ... for it means that the most expensive restaurants are, with rare exceptions, the worst.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“An ... important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality. Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)