What Is the Youngest Drinking Age in the World?

Alcohol consumption is one of humanity's oldest habits, and it has kept its popularity right up until the present. Across cultures, people drink a variety of alcoholic beverages, in a variety of contexts, and throughout much of their lives.

The particular effects of booze, which can range with dosage from a mild high to acute poisoning and even death, mean that excessive alcohol consumption ranks among the highest problem-areas of young people. Regulators therefore focus a lot of energy on this issue.

Most of the world seems to have decided that, if you have money to buy an alcoholic beverage, you shouldn't be doing so under the age of 18. The reasons for this have (mostly) to do with biology: A young person, whose brain is still developing, is more likely to make irresponsible decisions, which can be greatly exacerbated by excessive alcohol consumption.

Beyond that, the young brain itself can be especially susceptible to the deleterious effects of alcohol, which can cause harm to cognitive development. It's also believed that drinking too much alcohol can disrupt the young body's still-developing hormonal system.

If you've even been a young person with an interest in trying booze, you've probably discovered that drinking alcohol isn't really the hard part, it's the purchasing that's tricky.

If at 15 you show up to the gas station counter with chips and a soda, the clerk won't bat an eye, but if you try to buy a 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor, you'll have a problem.

Consumption of alcoholic beverages and buying them are usually regulated differently. For the purposes of this article, we'll look at purchasing, since that's what's usually implied by a "drinking age." Then, we can look at any outliers when it comes to obtaining alcoholic beverages.

The following countries have no minimum legal drinking age for alcohol. Again, this is separate from the minimum age for buying alcohol.

This doesn't mean that beer is served at snack time in kindergarten — just that, for whatever combination of reasons, the state doesn't see fit to regulate people who consume alcohol beverages, only people who are buying them.

Usually, this hands-off approach to legal drinking ages applies to private situations, not out in public; lots of localities will have restrictions on, say, buying alcoholic beverages for young people in a restaurant or bar.

To give a sense of how legal technicalities shape the consumption of alcoholic beverages, and how it varies from country to country, take the case of Malaysia (No. 60 on our list). Malaysia recognizes Islam (which forbids the consumption of alcohol) as its official religion, but doesn't enforce Shariah strictures on all its citizens.

If you are a Malay citizen who is Muslim, your ID will specify this, and it will be illegal to sell you any alcohol. Other people can be sold alcoholic beverages if they are 21.

To give an idea of how quirky some of the laws are, when examined up close, take a look at England and Wales. Both are part of the United Kingdom, where laws over who can supply alcoholic beverages and who can purchase alcoholic beverages vary from place to place.

However, in England and Wales, the minimum age for drinking alcohol is five years old. That's right: If you're five, your parents can give you a little beer or cider (hopefully they aren't offering anything stronger) and the bobbies can't say boo about it. But if you're four, sorry, lad, you're out of luck.

In the following list, you can drink alcohol if you're at least 16 years old. As before, the norms for drinking alcoholic beverages might vary considerably from one country to another, but as far as the law books are concerned, the minimum legal age is 16.

If you want to supply fermented alcohol beverages to a young person in these countries, they have to be at least 17 years old.

By now you probably can see where this is going. In the following countries, it's against the law to drink beer, wine or other alcoholic beverages under the age of 18.

We're now in more familiar territory, especially if you grew up in the United States. In these countries, it is illegal to consume alcohol beverages under the age of 21.