There are a lot of good ideas posted in this thread and others of how to secure your brews, such as faucet locks (with picnic taps hidden or kegerator locked), and you can also just lock the kegerator and disconnect the lines.
But when I see people griping about "drinking problems" in the same breath they talk about total volumes... I just sigh to myself.
To look at the volume ALONE and say it's problem drinking is a puritanical view.
Drunk driving, crimes while intoxicated, and being too drunk to function in your career or school... those are all problems. Drinking until your liver is pickled, that's a problem.
Knocking back a six pack every single night and getting up again to go to work is not a problem, and I don't really have a problem, conceptually, with the idea that a 16 year old is capable of the same thing. Drinking ages are guidelines, and seldom based on any actual evidence, just anecdotes and "common sense" (which obviously differs person to person, as show in this thread.)
Why is it in the USA that we can vote, marry, join the military (consentually or by draft) and do everything else that adults are expected to do, but not have a drink? It's an absurdity- and once you recognize that, you really have to question whether or not even 18 is such a magic number.
It's really a matter of maturity- 18/21 is intended to be a marker that nearly everyone is mature enough to make those decisions, but we still see college students behaving like spoiled kids, and teens who work to support their families as responsible adults.
A personal anecdote:
When I was around 5 years old, I expressed interest in the beer in my dad's cup- he let me have a sip, I hated it, and we moved on. Around 8 years old, I'd get a couple of ounces of wine with holiday dinners.
When I was 12, my dad pulled me aside with the greatest piece of parenting I've ever recieved:
"Son, I know that one of these days you're going to be tempted to drink. That's ok, there is no shame in it. But please, be careful. When you want a drink, there is beer in the fridge. Drink at home, with your family, where you'll be safe.
You just have two rules, one- I'm not buying beer for your friends. Their parents get to make that choice. Two, DON'T TAKE THE LAST ONE."
When I was 17, I ended up dropping out of high school. If you look at the stats, you might then imagine that I must have been one of those delinquents that started drinking early and got in trouble, right?
Wrong.
My family suffered a house fire, and my parents were already underemployed (my dad having suffered career setbacks and my mom returning to work after years away raising her kids). I was a senior in high school, and already working part time at the same company as my father, and with the financial troubles we had, I made a very hard choice, and left school so that I was allowed to work full time (students with a work permit don't have this option, a drop-out does)
I didn't just work 40 hours a week, either, I worked as much as they'd let me. Some weeks that was close to 60 hours, and for a long while, I worked 7 days a week, including holidays.
And on payday, when my dad and I drove home from work, we stopped at our neighborhood liquor store, and he'd buy me whatever I wanted (provided I had the money for my share), because at 17, I was a wage-earning adult.
I drink, and like much of my extended family and Irish ancestry, I sometimes drink to excess, but most of the time, what would be excessive for the average, is barely a light buzz for me, and the majority of my consumption has always happened at home- first with my parents, now in my own home.
I won't pretend what was right for me is right for all, but there are certainly more viewpoints to be had, and exposure at an early age doesn't automatically mean alcoholism. If anything, the complete abstinence of drink (and everything else) probably explains the college (and now high school) problems of alcoholism and unprotected sex (leading to spikes and STD's)
Is there anyone that can really argue that abstinence and prohibition really works?
