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Friday, July 25, 2025

Students welcome changing the age for alcohol use

by

Carisa Lee
15 days ago
20250710
UWI students Liberty Maynard, left, and  Ruth Thompson.

UWI students Liberty Maynard, left, and Ruth Thompson.

Young peo­ple are wel­com­ing the move by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to in­crease the le­gal age lim­it for al­co­hol con­sump­tion from 18 to 21 and for gam­bling and us­ing mar­i­jua­na to age 25.

How­ev­er, they are ques­tion­ing what sup­port mea­sures will be tak­en.

Out­side the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus yes­ter­day, stu­dent Ruth Thomp­son, 20, ad­mit­ted she was sur­prised by the an­nounce­ment but be­lieves the move will ben­e­fit the younger gen­er­a­tion.

“I think it’s some­thing that will help our youths to have like a straight point of view as to where they want to go in life rather than re­ly­ing on gam­bling or re­ly­ing on mar­i­jua­na to prob­a­bly ease time or use it as a hob­by,” she said.

The Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture stu­dent re­vealed that some of her peers said they use sub­stances to cope, but she dis­agrees and thinks they can find oth­er ways to oc­cu­py their time.

This was the point stu­dent Lib­er­ty May­nard made as she asked what Gov­ern­ment planned to put in place to help those who are un­der­age but ad­dict­ed.

“Okay, so they not us­ing these dis­trac­tions, which is good, but what are they do­ing in­stead? What are we do­ing, what are we putting in place, be­cause a lot of times peo­ple may use mar­i­jua­na, or al­co­hol, or gam­bling to dis­tract them­selves from what­ev­er men­tal or emo­tion­al stress they are go­ing through,” she said.

May­nard said she read the UNC’s minifesto ahead of the elec­tions, so she knew Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s plan, which she en­dors­es, but said there are short­com­ings.

“I think it would leave gaps be­cause I think some­thing should be im­ple­ment­ed to sup­port the youth emo­tion­al­ly and men­tal­ly, that is what we need, that’s why peo­ple turn to crime and drugs,” she ex­plained.

How­ev­er, she said if young peo­ple un­der the age of 21 want to, they would find a way to still drink, smoke and gam­ble.

UWI Guild pres­i­dent Vedanand Har­gob­in told Guardian Me­dia there are 13,000 stu­dents en­rolled at the cam­pus, and a large num­ber of them are un­der 25 years old.

In en­dors­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­ci­sion, Har­gob­in said rais­ing the age will al­low young peo­ple a few more years to ma­ture and de­vel­op with­out the risk of al­co­hol mis­use, which of­ten leads to road fa­tal­i­ties, a de­cline in aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance or even al­co­hol de­pen­den­cy.

“I def­i­nite­ly be­lieve this is about pro­tect­ing youth. While it may not be a pop­u­lar de­ci­sion in some cir­cles, it is def­i­nite­ly one in­tend­ed for the greater good,” he said.

An em­ploy­ee at You We Su­per­mar­ket and Liquor Mart and UWI stu­dent, Sarah Mo­hammed, said the busi­ness had not of­fi­cial­ly dis­cussed the way for­ward, but as cashiers, they are ac­cus­tomed to ask­ing stu­dents for a form of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, so they will just en­force that mea­sure now.

But lor­ry man Isa­iah Pile said he did not wait 18 years to drink, just to wait three more.

“We fin­ish our school­ing and every­thing, you’re al­ready an adult, we have to wait plus ex­tra just to drink a glass of White Oak or a glass of Pun­cheon, why?” he asked.

Mean­while, the chair­man of the Youth Arm of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), Daniel Rasheed, said the pol­i­cy is not about re­stric­tion but re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. He said the pol­i­cy em­pha­sis­es pro­tect­ing brain de­vel­op­ment, re­duc­ing ad­dic­tive be­hav­iour, and strength­en­ing so­cial well-be­ing. It’s a health-based ap­proach, not a moral judge­ment, he added.

“It is ground­ed in sci­ence, backed by ev­i­dence, and dri­ven by a vi­sion to en­sure that our gen­er­a­tion is pro­tect­ed, em­pow­ered, and ful­ly pre­pared to make the best de­ci­sions for our lives,” Rasheed said.

The Youth Arm said mem­bers will host ed­u­ca­tion and out­reach pro­grammes to help young peo­ple un­der­stand why this change mat­ters and how to make in­formed de­ci­sions.


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