AFAIK, before you can legally buy tobacco or alcohol, you can vote, buy a rifle or shotgun and enlist in the military. In most states, you can consent to sex 5 years before you can buy alcohol. Do you think any of this should change?
ETA: I didn’t mean to imply I think it should change, just wondering what your perspective is. My brain isn’t working too well after watching the Matildas
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>AFAIK, before you can legally buy tobacco or alcohol, you can vote, buy a rifle or shotgun and enlist in the military.
Honestly I think this should *all* be 21.
But the military will never, ever allow that.
Are you an adult or not? If you’re not mature enough to drink responsibly, why are we letting you decide to join the military? If we think your brain is developed enough to vote, why are we not letting you buy tobacco.
Today we know the brain is not fully developed until about 25, so we should make 25 the official start of adulthood, and an adult is an adult with all the rights and privileges thereof.
I don’t think about it much at all. It doesn’t affect me on a day to day basis as I don’t try to have sex with 16 year olds or buy beer for them.
But on the other hand, I think a nuanced approach to what society sanctions at different ages probably makes more sense than just declaring a single age to be valid for all purposes. One can quibble about what those thresholds should be and whether we’ve got it right, but I hardly think a one-size-fits-every-purpose approach is inherently better.
I cared when I was under age. Now that I am older I view it as a shitty rite of passage everyone has to go through
I am fine with giving those who have reached the age of majority (18 in most jurisdictions) the freedom to decide all of those things for themselves.
Do I think it’s arbitrary? Yes, absolutely.
Do I think it should change? Definitely not.
Are you mad you can’t rent a car or run for congress?
I don’t care at all, and haven’t since the literal second I turned 21.
If you’re old enough to die for this country then you should be able to drink booze or buy cigs.
The only thing I think is idiotic is that you can be old enough to be shot at in combat, but can’t (legally) drink with your squad mates.
The rest I don’t even waste braincells thinking about.
18 year olds voting makes about as much sense as 80 year olds voting but they should balance each other out so I’d say it’s fine
I have no problem with it. There’s nothing inherently requiring that every age requirement be exactly the same. It’s okay to have different thresholds for different things.
Besides, I’ve been to Europe enough times to see the problems that a lower drinking age can cause. I’m perfectly happy with the drinking age being 21, if that’s what you’re getting at.
I think it should be more consistent. For example, I can fully drive a car with no restrictions at 16, can buy a rifle at 18, can buy a pistol from a private sale at 18 (federally) but can only buy a pistol from a licensed dealer at 21. Gun store is not OK, but gun store parking lot is!
If you work and pay taxes, you should be allowed to vote before turning 18. The government is using your money so you should be able to, at the very least, have a small say in the process.
Alcohol, tobacco, guns, etc. should all be 18 since that’s when you’re legally considered an adult and can face adult consequences for fucking up. If you don’t know the potential dangers of any of that stuff by the time you turn 18 then I’m not sure what to tell you.
I’m iffy on the driving age though. I think 16 is fine, but we need a way more robust driver’s education program.
They are silly and arbitrary. If you are old enough to defend your Country you should be able to buy a beer.
Meh. Those laws were implemented at different times for different reasons. It’s not like somebody sat in a room with all the different issues and decided to give them different age limits. You’re over thinking this. America is really big and realistically will not have much consistency in any area, much less the laws of 50 separate states.
>In most states, you can consent to sex 5 years before you can buy alcohol.
to me, it doesn’t make much sense to connect these things. sex is something that happens regardless of public policy. the law is there to try and estimate when people have the ability to actually know what’s going on & agree to it. there’s no benefit in my mind to cracking down on what >18 year olds are doing in their personal lives.
that’s pretty different than something you go to a store and buy & consume. this law is in the interest of the teens and the general public. in the US, loads of teens are driving on the roads. allowing alcohol sales to them seems like it would lead to significantly more drunk driving. it’s also really bad for their health.
to be clear, teens do drink in the US, sometimes legally (Wisconsin & many other states allow for people to drink underage in bars if a parent or spouse buys them drinks), but I see no benefit to lowering the purchasing age.
Personally I believe if you’re old enough to defend your country then you should be old enough to be able to legally purchase alcohol, nicotine, etc.
I think you should be able to drink/smoke at 18; but I don’t really care as those are dumb af things to do anyway. I do think it’s a bit silly that I’m trusted to drive a 5000lbs vehicle by myself but couldn’t buy a ticket to see Oppenheimer without a permission slip; although that’s due to MPAA and not the government.
Younger brains aren’t done developing until a little bit later. 21 is a reasonable drinking age to me. Many states have provisions where a younger person can drink when they’re with their guardian/parents. That is also fine.
I feel like the being allowed to go into crippling debt with little to no counseling at 16,17 years old is the really fucked up thing.
just like we have age minimums for govt officials I.e. presidents must be 35 or older, I think age maximums should be a thing too
Change the age for purchasing alcohol to 18. You can be charged as an adult for “underage drinking.”
Doesn’t matter to me I’m 36 haha
In the grand scheme of things, we know that on average most people are not mentally adults until they are around 25 years old. So on one hand you would think that logic would dictate that you shouldn’t be allowed to do anything as an adult until you’re around that age. On the other hand, that doesn’t really make much sense, because people under the legal age for certain things still do them anyway. I had drank and smoked well before the legal age to do so. It also makes sense that the way things are done now sort of eases people into adulthood by giving them different freedoms at different times. As opposed to one day being a kid, and literally the next being able to drink, smoke, buy guns, join the army, gamble and whatever else.
The only thing that bothers me about any of this is the lack of consistancy on a state-by-state level for some things. Like, a 17 and 18 year old couple could cross state lines and suddenly the older one is a statutory rapist. Seems like it would be in the best interest of justice to just decide age-of-consent on a federal level.
It’s completely asinine to be old enough for military conscription, but not old enough to buy yourself a beer.
When I was 18 I thought I should be able to drink, now that I’m an older I’m happy 18 year olds aren’t at the bar with me because 21 year olds are already unbearable.
I think 18 makes sense be the standard for all. If we are going to consider someone an adult at 18 we should grant them all adult privileges.
But in general, these are laws I genuinely do not think or care about, as they don’t apply to me. It’s a rite of passage that we all have to wait the same exact amount of time for.
My five year old has been asking about a job in the textile factory. He’s quick and those presses would never get him. Those age laws prevent him. My wife died of consumption nearly two years ago. I guess I’ll continue selling apples I steal from a local orchard to get by. Thanks Brandon.
When I was a senior in high school you could still buy cigarettes at 18. That was right around the time some states (like IL) started raising the purchasing age
States make the rules, as it should be. Who am I to tell someone in Vermont what’s “right?” Voters make their own state’s rules. Democracy!
On kind off a different note, just talking about the how instead of why, the reason the drinking age is 21 in the first place is because of Reagan. It used to be a states issue, and was anywhere from 18 to 21, with different limits of beer vs hard liquors. Regan didn’t like that, so instead of setting a national drinking age, he threatened to cut states highway budgets until they raised it
Voting used to be 21, until the argument was made, that you can be drafted at 18, so you should be able to vote, and the government at the time agreed!
Age of of consent, again is still different within states, ranging from 16-18. It used to be a low as 7 in some places in the 1800s. A lot of places have Romeo and Juliet laws however, so for example in Illinois where age of consent is 16, a relationship between say a 16 year old and 15 year old wouldn’t be illegal. I obviously understand the purpose of these laws, but still find it strange that all that then means it illegal to have sex before 16, I know plenty of people who lost their virginity before that…
Guns are obviously a huge part of American culture, not just in a crime sense. I think rifles at 18, and other hand guns at 21 makes perfect sense (though admittedly, it’s pretty easy to obtain illegally before that). a rifle is not really dangerous the same way a hand gun is. I’ve been hunting and have first used a rifle with my grandfather when I was about 12. Not to say all 12 year all mature enough to handle guns (definitely not) but at least my grandpa determined I was, and of course he was watching me closely the whole time
I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about it as I think I’m now old enough to do everything anyway.
However, I have thought about where we draw the line for adulthood and simultaneously decide that 18 year olds are adult enough for somethings but not adult enough for other things. The common example being going off to war but not being able to drink. I’m not lobbying for any particular changes, but I think it’d make for an interesting discussion.
They’re frustratingly arbitrary. But given the sort of people who make and enforce laws, having relatively simple bright-line standards is probably the best we’re going to get. So I tolerate them as a kind of necessary evil.
Personally I think all of it should be raised to 21.
I’m fine with them. I wouldn’t mind lowering the drinking age to 18 but I lean towards keeping it where it’s at. For those actually serving I’d be fine with giving them an exemption to drink at 18 and keeping it at 21 for everyone else. Seems like a privilege they’ve earned.
Fun little politics lesson: Each state is actually allowed to set age restrictions for alcohol lower than 21, but the federal government incentivizes (or threatens?) the states by linking it to highway construction/maintenance funding. So each state can lower it if they want to, but no one wants to miss out on all those sweet sweet highway dollars.
The handgun law is probably going to be ruled unconstitutional in the not so distant future, currently many cases challenging it going through the court system and it’s likely SCOTUS will take one. Personally IMO everything should be allowed at 18: if the government can force you to go die in a war then you should be able to have a beer
This time of year I care more about the perfect grilled steak
I just find it funny how citizens of what is supposed to be one of the greatest, strongest and most free nations to ever exist cannot legally purchase a beer until they are 21.
They only matter until you reach them
For the most part they all kinda make sense I guess