No wonder society is on a downward spiral

As a Canadian reading this, the one word that comes to mind is LAX.

Everyone, from parents to police seem to have had an incredibly lax attitude about underage drinking. And now you are paying the consequences.

In Canada there surely are those who try to drink underage; but it is not so easy, and there are severe consequences for the responsible adults if caught.

Not so in Australia it seems. You reap what you sow.

reply to post by wayno


There has been more of an effort in recent times to quell the problem of underage drinking.

The biggest was the alco-pop tax, which was an added tax on pre-mixed drinks, it was supposed to stop underage people from buying it and binge drinking.

Obviously it failed miserably, instead of buying 4 or 6 packs of premixed drinks they went and bought bottles of unmixed alcohol and drank straight or mixed their own instead.

Smart huh?

reply to post by Chadwickus


Are you saying that they get away with buying alcohol themselves?? Here in my province the legal drinking age is 19 but they are required to ask for ID for anyone who even looks under 30. Some bars go so far as to ask for ID from everyone, even old gray haired guys like me which I do think is a bit over doing it.

reply to post by wayno


No, it's not legal if you're under 18 here, but it still happens of course.

Sorry, I was a bit vague.

reply to post by Chadwickus


I still say it's a policing issue Chad..

If the police fined the minors, therefore forcing the parents to front court and pay the fines, then I think it would stop a lot...

Use the laws that are inplace, thats what they were made for...
Instead all these kids get let off..
When was the last time you were let off a traffic fine??
Me? Never!!

This doesn't seem unusual to me. When I was 15 we had things a lot like this. (not this size because of the population of the town, and of course we went out into the woods to avoid being caught by the cops.) But we had nights like this. We called them Fridays.





[edit on 8/31/2010 by whatukno]

reply to post by Chadwickus


perhaps the parents were drunk themselves and rather than argue with their unwanted children over whether they could stay or not, knowing its an exercise in futility, and by now quite used to picking them up from the station, thought FUNK IT, lets just drop the little snots here and bail before we get done for drink driving.

I've seen it before...And its seems not so much that they don't think as it is that they don't care.
Because they're alcoholics...and that's A-OK where we live ay!

we've got a ridiculous amount of social & educational issues to deal with here... kind of sucks.

-B.M

reply to post by Chadwickus


it was kind of smart if you look at it like this -

"we need money!"

"stop underage drinking!"

"hmm...opportunity...we will stop underage drinking with this new....TAX!"

"yayy we love our government they fixed the boo boo!"

"yay we made money by duping the public! woo! pension boost!"

just my 2 cent.

I am not defending the actions of the parents but the kids are going to go anyway so at least the parents driving them there may stop them getting a ride with some unknown driver whose driving skills may be underpar.The drinking culture in OZ is deeply imbedded which is a cause of most social problems here,glad i'm not part of it even if it means being an outcast.

Australia?

This is just beyond ridiculous.