Smoking and Drinking Ages - Pointless?

[slipstrike0159]

Originally Posted by GuidoHunter

Bull****. Eighteen year olds are on the tail end of puberty, whereas most fourteen year olds have just started it. The destruction that smoking wreaks on an adult's body is multiplied several times over on a growing body.



HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Assuming fourteen year olds know ANYTHING is fallacious at best.

Now, lowering the drinking age to eighteen is fine with me, because the artificial maturity ascribed to eighteen year olds isn't completely unfounded, but to unleash something so destructive to young kids is just idiotic if you want them to be at all healthy.

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com

Dangit! I was totally forming my response exactly like yours.

Although, i do want to add that not only would lowering the age to 14 extremely damage the growing adolescent body, it would take off many restrictions and make kids start having the idea that they can do whatever.

Sure, ill give you that some kids will think the thrill is gone (assuming that its only maybe 2% OF ALL TEENAGERS!). There are many kids who wait until they are the proper age to start smoking for many reasons, parents being a big one of them. As i said, once you give young kids the idea that they can choose to smoke purely on the assumption that they know it "makes them cough lots" only gives them justification to make other huge personal choices with little knowledge or the lack thereof.
Even the whole thing of, "well i can smoke at 18 so why cant i drink at 18" plays to my whole theory. The next step to that (putting your scenario into play) is, "well at 14 i can smoke so i should be able to make more decisions at that age". Now of course it is an extreme, but you still get people out there who say that we should let 14 year olds drive, have sex, and many other things similar.

Also on the alcohol subject, i think it was (ORIGINALLY) primarily structured like this to keep the newly recruited military personel from getting drunk and becoming useless come combat time. Completely assuming this was back when we had the draft and when a very good percentage of teens joined the army, it was very logical to place the age at 21 to keep the "grab life by the balls" kids from becoming alcoholics within the first 2 years of service just because it seemed fun at the time. However now, when it is apparant that not such a high percentage joins the army right at 18 it might be good to think about lowering the age.

Face it, a majority of the reason why people start drinking and smoking is because it seems physically appealing to try new experiences. Even when you are the proper age its a rush to do something like that because it IS a new experience and you are very much excited to see how it turns out. So lowering the age more and more only give more justification to letting emotion driven kids make decisions that will affect the rest of their life in a negative way.