North Dakota is trying to legislate out something called Power Hour drinking, in which incredibly stupid people turning 21 hit the bars at midnight and try to down 21 shots before the bars close at 1 a.m. North Dakota's strategy: make it illegal for bars to serve alcohol to anyone until 8 a.m. on their 21st birthday. Now, as stupid as trying to down 21 shots in an hour is, the legislature's proposed solution is only slightly less moronic, and then only because passing the law, in and of itself, will probably not kill any of the legislators.
Why this will not work:
As it is now, the stupid 21-year-olds try to down 21 shots in the first hour that it is legal for them to drink. At the moment in North Dakota, the soonest they can do that is midnight on their birthdays. If the proposed solution goes through, the soonest 21-year-olds can drink would be 8 a.m. on their birthdays. Is anyone in the North Dakota legislature really naive enough to think that their solution will do anything besides move the practice to 8 o'clock in the morning? Face it. There is a certain segment of the population that finds the concept of getting falling-down drunk appealing, and will attempt to do this in public as soon as legally possible. Changing the time that it is legally possible will not alter this. For the record, in the interest of full, I spent my 21st birthday perfectly sober and moving between apartments, and I do not understand the appeal of being drunk. I have been drunk once, when I was 18, fully supervised by my then-brother-in-law, just to see what it was like. To save any of you the trouble, it feels like having the flu and salmonella poisoning at the same time.
A much better solution to the 21-year-old Power Hour Drinking Problem:
Instead of basing the ability to get falling-down drunk on the time of day of date of birth, try curbing the amount of alcohol any person can legally consume in a bar in a given hour. Sure the 21-year-olds are the vanguard of the stupid drinkers, but excessive drinkers come in all ages. Downing 21 shots in an hour requires, by my count, roughly one shot every three minutes. Bartenders have GOT to notice someone drinking that fast. Now, to limit the amount of alcohol a person can consume in a bar in an hour, one must balance the rights of the bar owner to do business against the public safety concerns involved in the sort of binge drinking we're trying to eliminate. 21 shots in an hour is obviously excessive and in most realistic scenarios at least unhealthy if not outright fatal. Where to draw the line, then? Ten shots in an hour is enough to get the average person more than drunk, and limiting a person to 10 in an hour would require 21-year-olds to stagger to at least 3 bars in an hour while still averaging a shot every 3 minutes. This level of bar-hopping is probably not outside the realm of the possible, but it would make 21 shots in an hour a whole lot more difficult, and give a chance for the intoxication from the first 4 or 5 shots to show up by the time the idiots find a bar to get the 21st one at. Limiting to 9 in an hour would even make that 21st shot less of a holy grail, since they would have to find a bar to serve the last 4 shots, rather than the last 1.
See? Much more elegant solution that does not rely in infantilizing a very narrow swatch of the people who probably could use some infantilization. If the problem group is the intersection of 21-year-olds and binge drinkers, doesn't it make more sense to target binge drinkers than 21-year-olds? After all, being 21 years of age in and of itself is not a public health hazard; binge drinking is.
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