h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

First, a correction. New Brunswick and Newfoundland are provinces of Canada, not states of the USA.
The drinking age in Canada is either 18 or 19, depending on the province. Bars can stay open until 2am or 3am, again depending on the province. Unless a bar/club is labelled "all ages", if a person is under legal age, they won't be allowed in. Each city/town has its own bylaws regarding alcohol. Some places say that underagers aren't allowed into restaurants with a certain kind of licence ever. Another kind of licence says that kids are allowed in until 9pm, but only with an adult. Pubs usually fall under the latter licence.

Hello,

In the United States, regulations for alcohol can be set by states, counties, and cities, but aren't really controlled by the national government. There are exceptions of course: alcohol was illegal from 1920-33 thanks to a Constitutional Amendment, and Ronald Reagan got most states to raise the drinking age to 21 by threatening to withhold funds for highway repairs if they didn't comply. Still, some states like Louisiana have a drinking age set at 18.

In the Northeast, there are a lot of "Blue Laws" on the books (thanks to our puritan forebears) that complicate drinking. So, bars are not allowed to stay open past 1am in Boston. And even in New York (our bars go till 4am), you aren't allow to purchase any liquor before noon on Sunday (not even to order at brunch), and you can buy nothing stronger than beer from a store on Sunday after noon. The one exception is for stores associated with vineyards, and a local winestore exploits this loophole by selling only Long Island wines, thus being the only store you can buy a bottle of wine from on a Sunday.

Yours,
Jake

The final version accepted by the editing staff took information about America and Canada and put it all together into one section. This is one of those few precious times I get to accuse people in Europe of being ethnocentric. Being an American myself, it's usually the other way around.

To be fair to the editors, if you read the North American section again, you'll see the paragraphs about the United States and the paragraphs about Canada are separate. They don't specify the difference between New Brunswick and ..say, North Carolina. On the other side of the Atlantic, they don't notice the difference.

The piece does probably need to be updated though. Your additions are correct. Also in recent years the laws in the U.S. have actually become more policed. They started successfully prosecuting establishments that sold alcohol to minors. I guess the liquor establishments ran out of excuses. Now they pretty much card anyone who doesn't have grey in their hair. And sometimes they even card grey haired women if they're cute. Incidently this is beginning to affect the financial stability of the hair coloring industry.

"On the other side of the Atlantic, they don't notice the difference."
I am not sure which side of the Atlantic you are spesking of but I can say, having lived both in the UK and Canada, I and almost everyone I have met differentiate between the different parts of North America, with the only exceptions being (not surprisingly) Americans. It seems to me that even if Americans travel or live abroad they still maintain their insular mindset.
This piece also should mention the drinking laws in Mexico because unless things have changed - plate teutonics, earthquakes, and volcanoes etc - Mexico is part of North America.

sorry - That should have been "plate tectonics"
Teutonics? They were a German military order weren't they?
Tectonics on the contrary must be coming from tecton or roof, or originally the oart of building (the roof) then expanded to mean the organizational conceptual, mainly from one constructive viewpoint scheme, and any constitutive organizational scheme, such in science tectonics of plates.

"Blue law" type rules aren't limited to the northeast. In Oregon, where I live, bars must close at two-thirty am, and bar staff or store clerks can be proseceuted fo serving to a visibly drunk or underage person. These laws are enforced by sending under-21 police cadets, made up to look older, in to buy beer. Anyone selling to them is promptly fined, as are their employers. This usually results in their being fired. Alcso liquor can only be sold in srecially licenced bars and government stores(at exorbitant prices), and these establishments can not be open later than 9:00 pm or on sundays. Another peculiar law is that containers of any alcoholic beverage cannot be carried out of the store unless they are in a sack provided by the store. Even if the customer wants to put it in e.g. a backpack, it must also be in a grocery sack. I cannot imagine what the reason for this is, especially as the last refinement was only added last year.

buying drinks and renting cars to 2 things you can't do unless you are 21 even though you can do all other things that become legal with age by the...sad ain't it?