Dr Rad­i­ca Ma­hase

Re­cent­ly, I have been read­ing so­cial me­dia opin­ions about the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Al­co­hol, Cannabis, Dan­ger­ous Drugs, Gam­bling and To­bac­co) Bill, 2026, which was passed at the be­gin­ning of this month. Ex­pect­ed to take ef­fect next year, the leg­is­la­tion would raise the le­gal age for pur­chas­ing and con­sum­ing al­co­hol and to­bac­co from age 18 to 21. It would al­so re­strict cannabis pos­ses­sion and gam­bling to peo­ple aged 25 and over.

Gov­ern­ment pre­sent­ed the bill as a pub­lic-health mea­sure in­tend­ed to pro­tect young peo­ple from the harms as­so­ci­at­ed with al­co­hol, to­bac­co, cannabis and gam­bling. Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe point­ed to re­port­ed binge drink­ing among young adults and ear­ly al­co­hol use among sec­ondary school stu­dents, de­scrib­ing the leg­is­la­tion as pro­vid­ing “le­gal guardrails” for young peo­ple.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie ar­gued that rais­ing the drink­ing age was sup­port­ed by “med­ical ev­i­dence” and in­ter­na­tion­al prac­tice. Their case was that lim­it­ing ac­cess could re­duce harm dur­ing the tran­si­tion to adult­hood.

Op­po­si­tion mem­bers ques­tioned both the bill’s pro­vi­sions and the process by which it was brought to Par­lia­ment. Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les ar­gued that it was “deeply mis­lead­ing” to present the leg­is­la­tion sim­ply as a mea­sure to pro­tect young peo­ple, since it al­so cre­at­ed new of­fences and in­tro­duced sub­stan­tial penal­ties.

Dur­ing the House de­bate, Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert called for the bill to be with­drawn and sent for pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the young adults who would be af­fect­ed. Their con­cerns cen­tred on whether the penal­ties were pro­por­tion­ate and whether there had been enough scruti­ny and pub­lic en­gage­ment be­fore the bill was passed.

For me, the most in­ter­est­ing part of this whole is­sue was the ‘de­bate’ which fol­lowed on so­cial me­dia. There was the gen­er­al com­ment that, “They can’t smoke but they can hold a gun”, re­fer­ring to the com­par­i­son be­tween the pro­posed re­stric­tions and the fact that a per­son may ap­ply to be­come a trainee po­lice of­fi­cer at 18, sub­ject to the oth­er re­quire­ments.

There were oth­er gen­er­al com­ments along the lines of “So, you can sell it but not use it, not mak­ing sense,’ re­fer­ring to the em­ploy­ment ex­cep­tion that al­lows peo­ple over 18 but un­der 21 to han­dle or sell al­co­hol and to­bac­co dur­ing law­ful em­ploy­ment.

This news­pa­per ran an ar­ti­cle stat­ing, “At 18, cit­i­zens are recog­nised as adults un­der the law. They can vote, mar­ry, en­ter con­tracts and qual­i­fy for a dri­ver’s per­mit. Yet, un­der the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion, those same adults would be barred from legal­ly pur­chas­ing al­co­hol or cig­a­rettes un­til age 21, and from pos­sess­ing cannabis or gam­bling un­til age 25.”

From read­ing the com­ments, I con­clud­ed that many cit­i­zens are con­fused about the mean­ing of age lim­its in the con­text of law and so­ci­ety and why dif­fer­ent ac­tiv­i­ties have dif­fer­ent age lim­its. There is the gen­er­al as­sump­tion that once a per­son reach­es adult­hood, they are al­lowed to do any­thing and every­thing.

The fact is, the age lim­it for one ac­tiv­i­ty does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly trans­late in­to the age lim­it for an­oth­er ac­tiv­i­ty. The law does not al­ways work that way. At 18, a per­son may vote or ap­ply to be­come a trainee po­lice of­fi­cer, while oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties are sub­ject to dif­fer­ent age lim­its. So, as much as we try to make com­par­isons, these do not prove the same age lim­it must ap­ply to all of them.

I think many peo­ple fail to re­alise that dif­fer­ent ac­tiv­i­ties serve dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es. On the one hand, vot­ing is a civic right while po­lice re­cruit­ment is an em­ploy­ment and pub­lic ser­vice de­ci­sion.

On the oth­er hand, al­co­hol, to­bac­co and gam­bling are reg­u­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties. Thus, we need to ex­am­ine each age lim­it on its own terms. We have to con­sid­er what it is meant to achieve and what ev­i­dence sup­ports it.

One age lim­it does not negate the oth­er. Thus, al­low­ing an 18-year-old to vote does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly mean the le­gal age for buy­ing al­co­hol must al­so be 18. Al­so, an in­di­vid­ual be­ing al­lowed to work in an in­dus­try that sells these sub­stances does not mean that they must al­so be al­lowed to con­sume them.

In a 2019 study pub­lished in Law and Hu­man Be­hav­iour, Grace Icenogle and her col­leagues ar­gued that it is “rea­son­able to have dif­fer­ent age bound­aries for dif­fer­ent le­gal pur­pos­es.” They dis­tin­guish the abil­i­ty to think through a de­ci­sion from the abil­i­ty to ex­er­cise re­straint in an emo­tion­al or risky sit­u­a­tion. These abil­i­ties de­vel­op at dif­fer­ent rates, which can jus­ti­fy dif­fer­ent le­gal age lim­its. We can recog­nise young peo­ple’s right to par­tic­i­pate in pub­lic life while al­so recog­nis­ing the rea­sons for pro­tect­ing them from par­tic­u­lar risks.

For me, un­der­stand­ing age lim­its means look­ing at what each one is in­tend­ed to achieve. Along­side these lim­its, we al­so need ed­u­ca­tion, guid­ance and op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple to de­vel­op good judge­ment. So, as we de­bate what young peo­ple should be al­lowed to do, let’s al­so con­sid­er how we can pre­pare them for the choic­es and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties that come with adult­hood.