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by duxup 1771 days ago
At some point you pick a number, it will always seem somewhat arbitrary.
2 comments

How about the same number that lets you vote, and decide where you live, or get drafted, and get married without parental consent, and get medical care without parental consent?
Voting, moving out, getting medical care, and marriage generally don't negatively impact your body and brain.

Alcohol, weed, cigarettes, etc. all do some kind of damage to your body. If anything we should raise cigarettes to 21. And yes, even weed, especially smoking weed, does damage to your body, even if it's massively less than the other two I said.

(And getting drafted... well that should just go away all together).

Cigarettes are 21 in the US as of three years or so ago.
Holy hell you're right. How did I not know that/forget that?

Guess it shows how much smoking cigarettes has been reduced in society (or how out of touch I am...).

then coca cola and energy drinks like monster/red bull should be for 21 too?
Banning sugar and caffeine would be tough.

For sugar, what do you actually ban? Added sugar? There's plenty of sugar in fruits, especially when you juice them. How do you enforce this? Seems like a nightmare to figure out.

Caffeine is interesting. It's actually physically addictive. I can't find any studies on long term effects of caffeine in children, though.

And, of course, there's exactly 0 support to do any of that, which can't be ignored. Probably a better use of everyone's time to improve health education.

we should be increasing some of those numbers to 21 too
If we want to go down the human developmental discussion ... not sure that results in more options or less for those under 21...
I say leave the number-choosing to the states.

Regulate medical marijuana like any other non-scheduled drug and leave cultural decisions concerning recreational use to the states, where it belongs. Use federal funding stipulations as leverage when needed.

Pick a number and it is still arbitrary, doesn't matter who does it ;)
I didn't mean to imply that it was any less arbitrary (the arbitrariness of the numbers is disputed in other threads), only that I view the feds setting that number as overstepping.