Hey Jack Feehery,
Happy birthday!
As a new 18-year old, you can now vote. You can serve in our armed forces, if you so choose. You can buy a car. You can do all kinds of things.
But because you live in America and its political class doesn’t value personal freedom, you can’t legally buy an alcoholic drink in a bar.
You can do it in Ireland, or Rome or Paris or pretty much any place that allows people to drink alcoholic drinks (not Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan and probably not Iran), but pretty much anywhere else.
America is a special place and when it comes to booze, it makes exceptionally stupid decisions. We actually once amended our Constitution to prohibit all alcohol in this country (except in churches…you could still drink wine at the altar), and when that turned out to be a complete disaster, we changed our minds and amended the Constitution again.
We have many people who don’t like when other people drink in this country. They are called Baptists and they are to be avoided. For example, don’t go fishing alone with them, because they will drink all of your beer.
Our family motto has always been that the family that drinks together, stays together. And when I was 18, when the drinking age was legal, I would drink with my mom and dad and my Uncle Bob. We had some good times and sometimes, I would drink too much and get sick. That is what we called a learning experience and it is best to have those learning experiences before you go to college, so you won’t do something totally stupid when you are far away from your family.
I know that if you drink (and I sure that you don’t), you don’t drive because God invented a think called Uber, which makes it a lot easier to get around without driving my car.
Drinking and driving is not good. Neither is driving and smoking pot (which seems to be very popular here in Washington DC). Nor is driving and texting, which is even a more popular pastime here in the nation’s capitol.
It was the nation’s capitol that passed legislation to compel states to adopt a national standard on the drinking age. I understand why some mothers decided to push Congress on that front, because some of their children died in car crashes because of drunk drivers. But banning all 18 year olds from drinking is an over-reaction, especially because most drunk drivers are far older than 18 (or 21 for that matter).
And when kids are banned from drinking beer (which is relatively benign) they will turn to other illegal substances, like pot or fentanyl. We know when happens when kids take fentanyl, but I don’t think we fully comprehend how bad pot is for the brains of teenagers. I have seen it first hand. Smoking pot is not good.
So Jack, I don’t mind if you have a few drinks, especially when you go overseas. Never drink and drive. Never smoke pot. Never take drugs.
And I enjoy your 18th birthday. I am sorry you can’t drink legally here in the states. I hope at some point, we can change that.