As a British person, one thing has always confused me about America....

It doesn't make any sense to many of us here either. An 18-year-old can join the military, go to war, kill a guy. But he can't make the decision to kill himself with cigarettes?

A friend told me of a surreal experience during a holiday in the USA.

He was unable to buy some beer in an ordinary shop because he could not prove being well above the legal age, despite him showing his UK driving-licence and protesting the car-hire form had accepted it.

The difficulty was that the shop assistant could not understand how his date of birth forms part of the licence number.

Yet she had no qualms about him buying rifle ammunition - and him a foreigner there!

(It was to replace that which he'd been invited to expend on a host's private range, on a farm.)

There were too many drunk driving accidents in the 80's so a lot of places raised the drinking age to 21 to help combat the problem.

It puzzles me that in many US states you can buy a gun at 18 but not alcohol. I can only assume they don’t like drunken gunmen

The age to purchase alcohol was raised from 18 to 21 due to 18-year olds buying it for their younger friends in high school etc. It was getting too common for them and they decided to raise the age.

It’s a well known sociological fact that British people develop earlier than Americans .

They can enroll and kill people abroad at 18 but they gotta wait until 21 to buy a beer?

Yes well in America things are done a bit differently

It is very weird that an 18 year old can get into the porn industry but can't buy alcohol 🤔

🤷‍♂️ just a general difference in law of the two countries . [airforce687]

I'm an American and it's confusing to me as well.

U are a adult at 18 here

The US seems incapable of making law simple anymore. Or maybe that's by design considering many legislators are lawyers who made careers on helping people navigate complex law.

I agree, you can kill someone at 17 but you can't drink until 21.