RECOVERED HISTORY: WHERE AMERICA'S STUPID DRINKING LAW CAME FROM

MARK STEYN, NATIONAL POST, CANADA, 2001 - What most Britons, Australians, Western Europeans and even Canadians would regard as [incredible] is that 18-to-20-year-olds in America cannot legally buy a beer. So Jenna and Barbara are obliged to have "fake ID." To the average National Post reader, "fake ID" probably sounds fairly exotic - the sort of thing you see in thrillers, where the guy needs to get out of town in a hurry, meets a furtive-looking fellow down by the waterfront, hands over $10,000 in small bills, and says he'll need it by Thursday. But, in America, fake ID is now as common as, well, real ID. . .

Fake IDs have prompted the development of machines that can detect fake IDs. The shares of one such company, Intelli-Check Inc., went up 20% on the news of Jenna's latest run-in with the law. These developments are relatively recent. Until 1984, some states had a legal drinking age of 21, some of 18, and some had no restrictions at all.

But then a lunatic control freak in the Federal Transportation Department decided she knew better than anyone the age at which people could drink. And, although she lacked the constitutional authority to legislate in this area, she had some financial muscle. She informed all 50 states that she would take away the federal government's highway funding from any jurisdiction that refused to raise the drinking age to 21. South Dakota went all the way to the Supreme Court, but the crazed regulatory megalomaniac won and took her legal team out to celebrate, presumably with Diet Coke. The maniac's name was Elizabeth Dole. . .

In Quebec, they have the same relaxed attitude to alcohol that distinguishes the Catholic countries of Continental Europe. . . The jurisdictions that have the least alcoholism are those where drinking is most socially acceptable and integrated into family life