{"id":365,"date":"2011-09-28T11:03:58","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T09:03:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/?p=365"},"modified":"2015-04-27T22:44:53","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T20:44:53","slug":"none-for-the-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/none-for-the-road\/","title":{"rendered":"None for the road"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s the last week of the Oktoberfest, and Munich is full of partygoers. Same procedure as every year, but with two differences: 1. Nearly all the German tourists are dressed up, which gives the whole thing more dignity<\/span>; and 2. They are younger than ever. Most of the visitors I’ve seen are between the ages of 16 and 18.<\/p>\n

Young people are very tolerant of crowds<\/span> and noise, and they should have their fun as long as they pay attention to safety.<\/p>\n

To the exchange students I advise<\/span>, the Oktoberfest is the greatest thing there is. The Americans in the group go there as often as they can. They find it liberating<\/span>.<\/p>\n

In all 50 US states, the minimum age for drinking any kind of alcohol is 21. Most kids do start long before that \u2014 older friends, brothers or sisters may buy them a bottle at the supermarket, or they may go to parties where alcohol is served \u2014 but in college there is always the risk of significant penalties<\/span> if caught.<\/p>\n

The last thing most college students can do is go into a restaurant and order a beer. They’d have to show their driver’s license<\/span> as proof of age. Most licenses are now difficult to forge<\/span>, and if the bearer<\/span> is too young to drink, \u201cUnder 21\u201d may be written in big, red letters across the front.<\/p>\n

American rules<\/h2>\n

Alcohol is a major point of discussion when we’re preparing our German exchange students to go to America. We warn that it’s illegal to walk around on the street with an open bottle of alcohol; that there are legal penalties for buying alcohol for minors<\/span>; and that no alcohol, not even in closed bottles, is allowed in the front seat of a car.<\/p>\n

Why is America so strict about alcohol?<\/p>\n

This started with the pioneers, who had to work from dawn to dusk<\/span> just to stay alive. A society like that couldn’t afford to have members who were not contributing their full effort. The settlers’ religious beliefs also gave them strong ideas about moral behavior, which is harder to enforce<\/span> when alcohol is involved.<\/p>\n

In 1790, America’s leading physician<\/span>, Benjamin Rush, identified alcoholism as a disease. Rush contrasted temperance (moderation<\/span>) with intemperance (lack of moderation), and recommended drinking nothing stronger than beer in order to reduce the risk.<\/p>\n

“Temperance” soon came to mean “total abstinence from alcohol”, and “temperance societies”, which blamed alcohol consumption for violence and criminal activity, campaigned to have alcohol banned altogether. In 1920, Prohibition was even written into the constitution. Too difficult to enforce<\/span>, it was ended in 1933.<\/p>\n

Around that time, the automobile began to replace other forms of transportation in the US. For 50 years, drunk driving<\/span> was a problem everyone knew about but no one talked about. No one seemed to stop bar patrons<\/span> from ordering “one for the road<\/span>“.<\/p>\n

Getting mad(d)<\/h2>\n

One afternoon in 1980, 13-year-old Cari Lightner was walking to church in California when she was struck<\/span> by a car and killed. Behind the wheel was Clarence Busch, a drunk driver with three previous DWI convictions<\/span>. Lightner’s mother, Candace, was so mad<\/span> that she founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Of all the attempts to limit drinking in America, MADD’s has probably been the most successful. MADD members speak before Congress, talk to school classes, and put up crosses at the side of the road where drunk drivers have killed people.<\/p>\n

MADD says one in three Americans will be involved in an alcohol-related crash in their lifetime. What would have become of Cari Lightner had she stayed alive \u2014 or of the brother of a girl I knew in college? He was sitting in a taxicab as it crossed an intersection<\/span>, when a drunk driver ran a red light<\/span> and drove into him at full speed. His life was over at 18.<\/p>\n

Different risks, a different history, but either way, young people are at the forefront<\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s the last week of the Oktoberfest, and Munich is full of partygoers. Same procedure as every year, but with two differences: 1. Nearly all the German tourists are dressed up, which gives the whole thing more dignity; and 2. They are younger than ever. Most of the visitors I’ve seen are between the ages of 16 and 18. Young … >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[148,63,51,156,118,214],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1749,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions\/1749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}