Alcohol

The subject would be almost funny if he weren’t really hypocritical .. complete ban on drinking alcohol before you turn 18. But this is all the more hypocritical as one then expects a young « adult » not only to consume it, but to consume a lot of it! It’s going from zero to 100 in a few weeks somehow.

In this case, I still prefer the French way which consists of having teenagers taste wine on Sundays and provide a glass of champagne for special occasion, drink and limit yourself, that can be learned

Ireland is the only country I know of, where breath alcohol tests take place… on the morning of December 25th. Not because the Irish have Guinness for breakfast, but because the authorities believe, with good reason, that the blood values ​​of the day before have not yet reached normal (let’s be honest here, it is quite possible that this happens in France too, just nobody thinks about it). However, the pre-covid Irish behavior made some sense: when they plan to go to the pub, they book the return cab in advance Which can lead to a scarcity of taxis around midnight by the way.

So what does the underage Irish teenager do? Well, he’s looking for alcohol, since it’s forbidden. Quite a few manage to get hold of « fake IDs », more or less in front of their amused parents. During the pandemic, there has been a ban on invitations at each other’s homes, therefore young people found themselves in parks with bottles with undisplayed content, which led me to see a pretty young girl vomiting in the nice park flowerbed. It was 4:00 … in the afternoon. True story.

In order to curb alcohol consumption, the government has been introduced measures that are quite incongruous for our French eyes: a ban on buying alcohol before 10:30 a.m. on weekdays and 12:30 p.m. on weekends. What are they thinking? That people would drink it straight away?

 An exception zone are the airports, and I saw more than once Irish people having a pint at 6am in an airport café, just because they can. The pandemic has not improved the issue as you might expect, so the government has circumscribed the alcohol shelves with a small barrier and has banned promotions that the Irish are fond of (reminder: everything is expensive in the country, ergo promotions are always welcome), like 6 bottles for 40 Euros, not sure that it will work though.