MovieChat Forums > Superbad (2007) Discussion > Drinking in the USA

Drinking in the USA

posted 11 years ago by eddywally
32 replies | jump to latest

After watching all these American teen comediesn I'm really wondering on how the situation is in the US with drinking under the legal age.
You can't legally buy alcohol under 21, which is absurd to me. In Belgium we can drink beer and wine from age 16 and liquor from 18 (although finding liquor when you're under age is quite easy).

So you guys can't drink a few beers with your friend in the weekend without the chance of getting into trouble? I mean, even in highschool we would relax in the city on fridays with a few beers and nobody cared about that.
When you have a party with +/- 50 people, do you really have only 1 cag (approx 180 pints) for the whole party like in the movies?

Could some Americans enlighten me with there situation about drinking under the legal age?

[–] xXnXnXnXx 10 years ago

I agree about the american part, but cmon, Australia is also very much a "nanny-state", just look at all the games you censor.

You also have a pretty long wikipedia list compared to other western countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Australia

[–] eifler121 10 years ago

I know this is late, but that party probably had one keg as well as a ton of liquor and bottled/canned beer. A lot of parents don't mind if you have a few drinks at home once in a while once you get to be around 16, some parents don't.

There's the scene in this where it shows them getting drunk at one of their parents' parties.

What most parents get so worked up about is getting wasted or having huge parties where teenagers are going to get crazy and wreck the house. In addition, if a party gets busted, someone gets hurt, or a kid drinks so much he dies to throw extreme cases out there, the parents can be held responsible even if they're not home.

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] QinetiQ 9 years ago

I always had a chuckle as a teen when I saw a US movie about the troubles to go through to get a beer in, I had my first beer when I was 14 or so. Nothing excessive, just a few and thats it. Legal age is 16 but no one really checked it at clubs. I think the thing is, when you are not allowed and you get your hands on it with some friends, you will get most likely hammered. It loses it's rarity when its normal to buy one. I dont ever remember trashing someones house nor even have a party at someones house for the reason to drink, we would just go out to a pub or club. Ofcourse we got drunk at times but mostly at older age, late teens etc.

[–] rmoriarty97 9 years ago

I've always wondered this myself, and in so many American teen movies going to a wild party is usually accompanied by some sort of car adventure and so many kids rock up to and leave these parties in cars - what's with that, is drink-driving seen as OK??

[–] Leesha92 9 years ago

It really is stupid. When I was 20 I did a uni exchange program to Hawaii and I felt 17 all over again. It wouldn't have bothered me so much if everything else was 21 too, like smoking, voting, getting married, going to war etc...but everything is 18 except drinking. It's just nonsensical to me.

Anyways, my experience with was they were very strict with alcohol purchases. A couple of my dorm mates that were only 19 and getting fake IDs (which I thought was cute because in Australia you get a fake ID when you're...ya know an underage teen rather than an adult in college), and they both got busted by the cops. Another party was also busted by the cops and they all got arrested for underage drinking because the police scanned their ids and it popped up on their thingies that they were fake (I wasn't at this party, just retelling a story my dorm mate told me who apparently managed to just escape the cops so it could be fake lol). New technology it seems is making it a lot easier to tell a fake ID from a real one.

[–] blackknight273 9 years ago

I think the interpretation of teens drinking in this movie also depends on what generation you are from

I'm a gen-xer, and my teen years were in the 80's most of my friends drank or smoked pot. What I saw in the movie is pretty much what we called "every weekend." The kids in the 70's called it the same thing, even though they were much wilder than we were. We were also the last generation to really get away with partying before the nannies clamped down in the late 80's and early 90's

I don't really see a problem with kids doing this in their teens. I think we need to pull back on the over-nannying of teen drinking in the US. I don't believe we ought to be handing kids six packs on their way to school, but I think we really over react and over protect and it shows - millennials are total pussies because of it. Now kids get caught drinking and they want to throw them in counseling, diversion programs, or skrew with them academically.

The kids of the late 50's to the early 90's also handled drinking alot better than they are given credit for. Granted it wasn't always pretty - some of those keggers turned into a cross between a Dothraki wedding party, and the Altamont Concert, but we took our lumps and we lived through it. It was a part of growing up that most of America did and parents looked at as just one more inevitable drama you go through while raising a teenager.

I just don't buy that this is a problem. My guess would be that this would actually be less of a problem (I'm talking alcohol only, not drugs. You millennials are hopeless when it comes to drugs) due to all the nannying and hovering that goes on by dogooders.

I will now sit back and take that flaming that I will gladly endure

[–] milicentbrovovich 8 years ago

Drinking age is 18 in the UK but it's super easy to get alcohol before that. And my parents didn't mind me having a cheeky drink at home with them since I was 16 (would have drink for dinner and special occasions before that) and now at 21 it's seen as abnormal to not join in with drinking a few cheeky ciders with my mum. This makes me sound like an alcoholic lmao im not maybe europe and uk are just very different to US. i dunno.

[–] mikeallen21 8 years ago

It is illegal to drink under 21, but everyone does anyway. America has over 300 million people, there are people of every sort and tolerance to alcohol and or drugs. But most important to know is THESE ARE MOVIES! It is not real!