Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's an­nounce­ment on Mon­day re­gard­ing pro­posed changes to the le­gal age lim­it re­quire­ments in Trinidad and To­ba­go, calls for a more in-depth na­tion­al study and ex­pla­na­tion of the ra­tio­nale be­hind the moves.

The pri­ma­ry pro­pos­als, ar­tic­u­lat­ed dur­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress' meet­ing in Pe­nal, in­clude rais­ing the le­gal age for al­co­hol con­sump­tion to 21 years, and for gam­bling and mar­i­jua­na use to 25 years through new leg­is­la­tion to be brought be­fore Par­lia­ment.

As it stands, how­ev­er, the an­nounce­ments are lack­ing in de­tails of any ev­i­dence-based ben­e­fits that could val­i­date these new lim­its, which dif­fer from the ex­ist­ing age lim­its for oth­er crit­i­cal na­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ty, such as vot­ing, dri­ving, mar­riage, mil­i­tary ser­vice and con­trac­tu­al ca­pac­i­ty.

Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar had pre­vi­ous­ly ex­pressed Gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment to "deal de­ci­sive­ly with gam­bling, mar­i­jua­na and al­co­hol ad­dic­tion."

That would po­si­tion the pro­posed age-lim­it changes as a pub­lic health ini­tia­tive de­signed to safe­guard at-risk youth and al­le­vi­ate wider so­ci­etal ills linked to sub­stance abuse and at­ten­dant be­hav­iours.

With that said, we are aware of re­search which sug­gests in­creas­ing the le­gal drink­ing age cor­re­lates with a de­crease in ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dents.

Fur­ther­more, it has been ar­gued that the hu­man brain, es­pe­cial­ly the pre­frontal cor­tex re­spon­si­ble for de­ci­sion-mak­ing and im­pulse con­trol, con­tin­ues to de­vel­op un­til the mid-20s, giv­ing le­git­i­ma­cy to the pro­pos­al for in­creas­ing the age at which gam­bling and mar­i­jua­na use are per­mit­ted to 25.

How­ev­er, while the sci­en­tif­ic ba­sis for the pub­lic health ben­e­fits as­so­ci­at­ed with all three pro­posed age in­creas­es may be sound, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ra­tio­nale for "com­bat­ing ad­dic­tion" is un­ac­com­pa­nied by any hard facts so far, and there­fore prompts ques­tions about the na­tion's de­f­i­n­i­tion of 'adult­hood' and 'ma­tu­ri­ty.'

T&T cur­rent­ly de­fines le­gal adult­hood and grants sig­nif­i­cant rights and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties at the age of 18.

This is the age al­lowed for vot­ing, the cor­ner­stone of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic par­tic­i­pa­tion, for mar­riage, for sex­u­al con­sent and for con­trac­tu­al ca­pac­i­ty, among oth­er things.

More­over, vol­un­tary re­cruit­ment in­to the armed forces is al­so al­lowed at 18 years, which comes with the bear­ing of arms, en­gag­ing in com­bat, and po­ten­tial­ly sac­ri­fic­ing one's life for na­tion­al de­fence.

The pro­posed changes by Gov­ern­ment, there­fore, will cre­ate a le­gal frame­work in which an 18-year-old is recog­nised as ma­ture enough to do all these ac­tiv­i­ties, but is viewed as not ma­ture enough to drink al­co­hol, gam­ble, or use mar­i­jua­na.

If the State en­trusts an 18-year-old with the du­ty of se­lect­ing na­tion­al lead­ers or de­fend­ing the na­tion, what philo­soph­i­cal or prac­ti­cal ra­tio­nale ex­ists for lim­it­ing these par­tic­u­lar recre­ation­al ac­tiv­i­ties for an ad­di­tion­al three or sev­en years?

There are im­por­tant ques­tions that must be an­swered, par­tic­u­lar­ly as those af­fect­ed by the changes may per­ceive the pro­posed pol­i­cy as over­reach­ing, ar­bi­trary, or even an in­fringe­ment on their rights. It could al­so have the un­de­sir­able ef­fect of forc­ing per­sons in­to a par­al­lel uni­verse of ac­tions that have the ef­fect of erod­ing the very gains the pro­pos­al seeks to de­rive. Worse yet, in the ab­sence of ef­fec­tive mon­i­tor­ing and polic­ing sys­tems, the in­ten­tion may be con­sid­ered dead in the wa­ter be­fore it ac­tu­al­ly starts.

In the in­ter­est of gain­ing pub­lic trust and le­git­i­ma­cy, Gov­ern­ment ought to think care­ful­ly about all the pos­si­ble ram­i­fi­ca­tions and sup­port­ing ac­tions re­quired be­fore the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion goes to Par­lia­ment.