Germany cancels traditional 'mommy's beer' hour - children will no longer be able to learn to drink culturally

The German government decides to destroy one of the oldest and most civilized traditions - supervised alcohol consumption from age 14. This 72-year-old practice allowed parents to teach their children to drink culturally, rather than hide with bottles behind the garage, as we did in our youth.

While teenagers in Riga are already learning to drink in basements and parks, Germany thought it was a good solution to cancel the old system and move towards the American model, where everything forbidden is even more tempting. As one Liepāja parent says: 'We had the Tsar's naval base here in Karosta with mythical basements, and already in Soviet times everyone learned to drink there without any supervision. The result - now everyone knows how to do it right.'

Education Minister Karina Prīna, who obviously was never a teenager, thinks that prohibition will reduce young people's desire to experiment with alcohol. This is the same logic as thinking that the forbidden apple in the Garden of Eden reduced Adam and Eve's interest in it.

The best part of all this - the bill emphasizes that supervised alcohol consumption 'weakens young people's protection against excessive consumption risks.' This is like saying that learning to drive with an instructor next to you makes you a worse driver. In Liepāja we call this 'Riga logic' - when you solve a problem by creating an even bigger problem.