[tikhonj]

That's interesting, because I have the opposite reaction: I'm really tired of USA's general puritanical anti-alcohol culture. It's tiresome and moralistic.

I'd love to have a glass of beer with lunch and not have an arbitrary taboo about alcohol at work. I'd love not to worry about drinking in public. It's treated like an ugly bodily function! I'd love not to be hassled for ID everywhere I can drink. I'd love (or, more accurately, would have loved) a more reasonable drinking age.

But no, US culture makes casually drinking alcohol—something that should be entirely reasonable—awkward and difficult. In practice, all it means is that I can't responsibly enjoy a nice glass of wine at the park and college students still end up binging on cheap beer and liquor.

[sneak]

That's not anti-alcohol culture, that's simply authoritarian legislation. Alcohol licensing authorities, operating on 200+ year old laws enacted by uptight religionists, have taken it upon themselves to cause as many possible hurdles to business owners as possible, simply because they can.

It's not an "anti-alcohol culture". It's simply power-hungry officials. The US drinks like there's no tomorrow.