NY City Council Votes to Raise Cigarette Purchase Age to 21

[True Blue Door]

4. Age limits on drugs are an interesting topic.

On the one hand, you have to take into account the medical issues - e.g., keeping kids from poisoning themselves while they're still developing. But on the other, you have to account for the psychological backlash that comes from making a given drug "cool" by age-limiting it.

I think the best policies are actually quite a bit different from what they are now, but setting the tobacco age at 21 is a good start. Nicotine is extremely addictive, so it's best to have people be physically mature when they get involved with it.

On the other hand, I think the right approach to alcohol is counterintuitive. Raise the driving age to 17 and then reduce the drinking age to 16, so that they get the partying out of their system before they start driving, and by the time they get to college it's ancient history so they can focus on their work. After all, 16-18 is about when they start drinking anyway, so just have the law reflect reality in a way that reduces harm rather than lives in denial.

Right now they have it backwards, letting kids drive a lot earlier than letting them drink, so what happens is when they start drinking they're not responsible with it but have a driver's license. That's bad. Better they drink irresponsibly and stagger around as pedestrians and THEN learn to drive later when they're figured out how to drink responsibly.

Granted, I don't have kids, so I'm just talking as someone thinking back to my own experiences rather than as a parent, so I understand why this would sound ludicrous to some people. But I think the logic works well.