Brian ZiffShawn Mendes loves recording and touring in America, but there’s one thing the Canadian teen doesn’t like about the U.S.: the drinking age.
In Canada, where the drinking age is 19, Shawn is legal, but in the U.S., where it’s 21, he’s not even allowed to walk into a bar. He tells Rolling Stone that’s what irks him the most about the situation.
“I don’t find it frustrating because I care about alcohol — I care about time with friends in bars,” he explains. “I’m being denied a social experience, not an alcoholic beverage. I wish I was allowed to just go in the bar and drink a pop, because then I would at least be there with everyone and I wouldn’t have to be in my hotel while everyone else is at the bar.”
Asked if the U.S. should lower the drinking age to 18 or 19, Shawn says he thinks it’s a good idea. “In America, there’s this kind of pressure that builds inside of needing to go to the bar,” he says. “By the time you’re 21, which is like a full adult, you just explode.”
“I feel like a lot of crazy things kind of happen to kids when they first go out instead of if it was a few years younger,” he adds. “Maybe they wouldn’t have been so tempted to go that crazy.”
While he’s waiting for the U.S. drinking age to be lowered, Shawn tells Rolling Stone, “I drink a s**t-ton when I go home, and I just don’t drink in America. I get it all out when I go home.”
Shawn says his drink of choice is rye and ginger but since it makes him hung over, he’s recently switched to tequila.
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