Where I live in Western Europe beer is legal at 16 and hard liquor at 18. Illegal alcohol is close to non existent. You get the occasional hobby brewer and that's about it. There's a little crime in fake expensive liquor but even that is occasional.

What you noticed is what we see here with tobacco though. They keep trying to phase it away by increasing taxes and upping the age limit from 16 to 18. They're also trying to ban e-liquid flavors. But what really happens is that there are now a lot of illegal cigarettes and vapes making their way to teenagers. Not to mention stuff like unregulated THC vapes that actually contain synthetic weed and can be extremely dangerous.

Governments have always been making things worse.