The drinking age
I know a little bit about the illegal nature of underage drinking as I suffered penalties as result of my choice to drink regardless of the laws in place. This has not changed my opinion on underage drinking, mostly along the lines that the current system is not really all that effective. Teenagers and young adults are probably going to drink if they want to regardless of whether or not a law says it is illegal. I like hearing that Vermont legislatures are making some headway in the matter of underage drinking. Maybe some dialogue can spark further examination in ways to change policy that doesn’t seem to be doing all that much.
General Lordisimo's Apocalypse 
Growing up in Europe, drinking was never a big deal: Every Friday or Saturday night, my high school friends and I would meet downtown paris or brussels and have a few drinks (some more than others), but basically, after one or two pints – maybe three, we were kind of done and would eventually take the subway or tram home without getting ourselves into too much trouble. Being fall-over drunk or drunk-obnoxious was considered to be a faux-pas (immature, not cool) so we didn’t overdo it. Stripping naked and dancing on the bar or falling over in a stupor or puking everywhere were not considered cool at all.
Then i moved to the US, where the exact opposite was true: binge drinking was the norm, and getting shitfaced was the cool thing to do on a weekend night. Ironically, getting a girl fall-down drunk seemed to be the strategy of choice for getting her to get jiggy… which in my European world would have been regarded as extremely ungentlemanly, underhanded and downright predatory.
The difference between both cultures:
– The legal drinking age in most countries in Europe is typically 18 (in countries that even enforce a drinking age) vs. 21 in the US.
– Drinking in Europe is not a taboo. Alcohol is not the devil’s juice as it is here.
– Unpasteurized cheese.
I completely blame the pasturization of our cheese on the poorness of our alcohol legislation regarding young adults.