It’s my birthday tomorrow (a monday I know it sucks). I was born late relative to my class on November 18th 1995 making me 18 years old November 18th 2013. Spending my entire childhood living in Calgary where the provincial legal drinking age is 18, and moving to Vancouver where it’s 19 for my 18th birthday , as you guessed, was just bad timing. Now the sepia toned photos of all my hometown friends enjoying their first legal drink at a bar that had been invading my instagram newsfeed since the start of 2013  and the one I had been patiently waiting for will sadly have to be postponed. The thing that I don’t understand is what will change during the flight from YVR to YYC when I come home for the break. I’ll be sanctioned from even entering a liquor store at 10am then fully able to  drink however much I should so choose at 12pm. It seems awfully arbitrary to me. Now this isn’t a post which offers many diverse arguments overflowing with teenage conviction surrounding the unfairness of it all that adults can drink certain liquids that I can’t (although I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered such arguments). What get’s me really interested is the economics behind it all. The alcohol industry is so unique in the fact that it’s only one in a handful of markets that is strictly controlled by barriers to entry overseen by the government. It doesn’t make any sense economically how a supplier would agree to sell in a market where a significant portion is actually legally unable to purchase their product. It’s one thing to refrain from targeting a certain customer segment, but it’s another to agree that you should call the cops if a customer of this aforementioned segment (underage) purchases a product. I have come to understand now on the eve of my birthday that this economic sanction towards a demographic within an industry has made me more willing to buy than before. It’s reverse psychology, I couldn’t have something for 18 years, naturally I want to have it.