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For those of you who would have been say young teens in the 50s/60s/70s was it really easy for a young person to buy alcohol? With store keepers not caring? I also heard back then if a cop pulled you over you could be super drunk and there would be a good chance he'd drive you home, or let you walk home, is that true?
Late 70s and earliest 80s ... neither easy nor hard.
Tactics included:
- Asking adults (typically drunks) to buy - we'd give them part of what we bought
- A few older appearing friends could get away with buying without getting carded
- Altered IDs, something not easily done today, with many more security features
- Certain stores in bad hoods would be very lax about carding, it was always worth a try
- Outright theft. For example, a pallet out in back of a store, not stocked yet.
Interesting how things changed from earlier eras. Some posters stating booze was easier to get than drugs. Obviously by the time the SCARY generation who shall not be named was on scene, that completely reversed. Flies in the Vaseline we are. Or were ... maybe still are?
[quote=BayAreaHillbilly;48972315]Late 70s and earliest 80s ... neither easy nor hard.
Tactics included:
- Asking adults (typically drunks) to buy - we'd give them part of what we bought
- A few older appearing friends could get away with buying without getting carded
- Altered IDs, something not easily done today, with many more security features
- Certain stores in bad hoods would be very lax about carding, it was always worth a try
- Outright theft. For example, a pallet out in back of a store, not stocked yet.
Interesting how things changed from earlier eras. Some posters stating booze was easier to get than drugs. Obviously by the time the SCARY generation who shall not be named was on scene, that completely reversed. Flies in the Vaseline we are. Or were ... maybe still are?
I wouldn't say it was easier to get then drugs (no one sold booze in my high school lol)
Wow. Racist and wrong. However, you do bring up an excellent point. This thread is full of people (assuming whites) telling about how they committed illegal acts with seemingly no consequences. Yet, as demographics change, all of a sudden, these same acts are now major crimes. Hmmmm...
Yes, you could hang around a liquor store in the early 60's and get an adult (wino, young person not much older than you, etc.) to buy you liquor if you paid them. From the late 60's on you could get drugs easily, often for free at parties or from friends who shared. And back in the early 60's, most cops were human beings who used their own judgement and looked to help citizens, drunk or sober, not arrest them. Many got drunk every night themselves when they went off duty. It was a different culture completely. Most of the Vietnam vets who became cops were smoking pot themselves.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marleinie
For those of you who would have been say young teens in the 50s/60s/70s was it really easy for a young person to buy alcohol? With store keepers not caring? I also heard back then if a cop pulled you over you could be super drunk and there would be a good chance he'd drive you home, or let you walk home, is that true?
Because law enforcement is a profitable business for everyone involved (lawyers, prosecutors, police, judges, prison guards, etc.). It's not about protecting and serving, it's about writing tickets and making arrests and plea deals with fines.
Quote:
Originally Posted by charlygal
Wow. Racist and wrong. However, you do bring up an excellent point. This thread is full of people (assuming whites) telling about how they committed illegal acts with seemingly no consequences. Yet, as demographics change, all of a sudden, these same acts are now major crimes. Hmmmm...
For those of you who would have been say young teens in the 50s/60s/70s was it really easy for a young person to buy alcohol?
The drinking age in many states in the 70's was 18, including New Jersey where I lived, New York where I went to rock clubs, and in Massachusetts where I went to college.
I heard of kids in high school who bought alcohol but I didn't really start drinking until I went to college. Of course, with the drinking age at 18 there were some kids who were still in high school who could legally drink.
Cigarettes were another story. You could buy them out of a machine or from a store and nobody got "carded". And you could smoke in certain designated areas of the school, but you couldn't drink at school (legally).
I am a little bit confused by this because I have some German-American ancestors who owned taverns and breweries, and even brewed in secret during prohibition, and they were also Protestant. In fact, right after prohibition, they were a founding family of the local German-American social club (basically a beer garden in the woods).
Yes, sorry, should have clarified meant WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) who were up in arms over the Germans and their drinking habits.
Then again in the early part of last century WASPs were up in arms over many things including immigration from Europe (other than say England of course), so there you are then.
Should also like to mention that "drugs" many teens got say from the 1950's well into the 1980's were often various sleeping pills, uppers, downers, and tranquilizers either from their parent's medicine cabinets and or some other teen/young adult. The latter often got his or her supply from the same source.
Around the 1940's or maybe 1950's doctors were handing out prescriptions for Valium, Nembutal, Quaaludes, Amphetamines and so forth like candy to any bored housewife/female patient, and or anyone else with any sort of "complaint". No one bothered about addiction and or were held accountable. Hence you got sad cases like Judy Garland and others who offed themselves by overdosing.
In the 1960's or 1970's plenty of women were on "diet pills" (which were mostly nothing but uppers), and then they also had "downers" to get themselves to sleep at night.
Grew up in a more suburban part of New York City and am here to tell you by high school you could get Quaaludes, Valium and so forth at almost any party or even in school if you where to ask. Supposedly "ludes put you in the mood"....
in the black section of town was a run down grocery store, always some winos outside, buy them a bottle and you get whatever you want, couple cases no problem
I graduated from high school in 1959; I received my A.B. in 1963. I never saw street drugs in either high school or college. A friend of mine had heard of marijuana on campus in '62 or'63. Although a stalwart trencherman, this visibly disturbed him. No one wished to have drugs or drug users on campus.
It really was a better time.
There still forty-five states where parents may allow their children to drink alcohol. For example, in Wyoming, a family may go out to dinner and the kids may drink. I'm sure that the prohibitionists from MADD are in a rage over this although I'm sure that they have their marijuana and heroin handy to lessen their emotional pain.
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