03-02-2021, 10:12 AM
(02-28-2021, 03:59 PM)David Horn Wrote:(02-28-2021, 09:46 AM)beechnut79 Wrote: One of the exceptions though was that in many areas 18 to 20 year olds had won the right to drink. By the mid 1980s that was lost throughout the US as the minimum age of 21 was restored. More recently the age for purchasing tobacco products was raised as well. Why is it that we are the only place in the world where you have to be 21? And might the issue be resurrected in the next 2T?
The 18 age rule was driven by the draft. It's hard to tell anyone that they can be drafted to fight in a war, but can't drink or smoke until they're 21. Of course, that went away and so did the more permissive rules for tobacco and alcohol.
Cells are still dividing in 18-year-olds, and it is quite likely that any carcinogen that one experiences at such an age makes one prone to cancer later more powerfully than the same carcinogen to which one is exposed later. There was a time in which children in their pre-teens were smoking, and fifty years later America had an epidemic of lung cancer. Alcohol is very different from tobacco in that it is a mild drug for adults but a hard one for children.
The problem with the 18-year-old drinking age was that 18-year-old boys were plying 14-year-old girls with alcohol so that they could have sex with them. 14-year-old girls got pregnant, and that was a disaster.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.