It is bizarre we have our vice age at 21 but the age of adulthood is 18. You are responsible enough to vote, serve in the military and be charged as an adult in a court law but not responsible enough to drink or smoke.
> calorie consumption
Healthy food subsidies and soda/candy taxes. Restrictions on food stamps.
> motorcycle usage
Licensing, training, and helmet requirements, age minimum.
> dangerous hobbies
Licensing and training requirements, often with age minimums.
It'd be great if the government could reduce sedentary lifestyles, but making people do stuff tends to be harder than making them not do certain things.
and yet you can join the army and kill some people before you have the wisdom of age and experience?
It hurts my eyes, I know its bad for my lungs, and its aggravating to see the attractive people doing it to blend it, to me its like they are stuck in the 2000s
So you want to talk about the hypocrisy of "18 for military, but 21 for drink/tobacco" let's also talk about why the age cut off for the ACA/IRS isn't 18 too, it is only self-consistent with that argument.
If you're really a full adult at 18, let's consider what that would look like, even when that means cutting the cord in ways that provide benefits to young adults (e.g. like essentially blackmailing families into paying for their "children's" college via their parent's income being used to calculate assistance and loan qualification).
It is unreasonable to consider this "multiple age of responsibility" topic from one vantage and not the other.
Anyone who has been to college knows that the drinking age being 21 is pointless. It just means that an 18 year old who wants to drink will have someone buy it for them, or they'll go to a party and drink jungle juice, or they'll get a fake ID. Having a drinking age at all, IMO, sets up people to seriously hurt themselves when they turn 21 if their parents shelter them.
Barring that last point (since ODing on nicotine like you can on alcohol is a lot tougher), the same will now be the case for smoking / vaping.
From a safety perspective, I would rather have 18 year olds buying legitimate juul pods (although the safety of these should be regulated more heavily) than buying sketchy fake shit off the internet or second hand from a friend.
I disagree with the harm minimisation/safety argument because the primary harm minimisation for tobacco products comes from preventing their use at all.
and quitting drinking is easy? AA exists in every corner of the globe, for a reason.
https://ourworldindata.org/smoking https://ourworldindata.org/alcohol-consumption
LOL! Death from age-related natural causes also affect older populations. Most of those who die of natural causes are over fifty.
Notice that I am not disagreeing with you that alcohol causes a lot of harm. It does. As I said, alcohol and tobacco are fundamentally different, on neurophysiological, social and cultural levels.