America Needs to Synchronize the Laws on Becoming an Adult

In America, we say someone has the right to vote or even die for our country, but we deny that same person the right to drink a beer, smoke a cigarette, or even just rent a car for the weekend.

One of the factoids you hear a lot these days in the discussion surrounding allowing teens to have smartphones and social media is that the frontal lobe of the brain isn’t fully developed until around 24-years-old. The argument is that teens and young twenty-somethings don’t have the level of self-control until their mid-twenties, so restricting access to social media is a good decision. I don’t want to dive into that thorny issue; rather, I want to discuss what I see are inequitable laws involving Americans under 24-years-old.

Specifically, it has always bothered me that we have different ages for when our kids are treated as adults, with some of those differences being in stark contrast. The most obvious one is the right to vote at 18-years-old. A second one is being 17-years-old to serve in the U.S. military. Here are others:

• Right to drive a car: 16-years-old in most states;

• Age of consent for sex: 16-years-old in a majority of states, with others at 17-years-old and 18-years old;

• Legal drinking age: 21-years-old;

• Ability to rent a car: 21-years-old;

• Age of emancipation: 18-years-old; and

• Right to buy tobacco: 21-years-old.

Do you see the problem? In America, we say someone has the right to vote or even die for our country, but we deny that same person the right to drink a beer, smoke a cigarette, or even just rent a car for the weekend. An 18-year-old can be fully emancipated, but can’t do basic activities because we believe they don’t know better or aren’t responsible enough to do it. Those incongruities smack me as a bit absurd.

Now, I’m not advocating that we lower the age to drink, smoke, or rent a car; rather, I’m suggesting that perhaps we should have a serious discussion about synchronizing the age when we deem our teenagers to be adults. Circling back to the frontal lobe development issue, can we really say that a 17-year-old can make the incredibly life-changing decision to serve, fight, and die for our country? How about the 16-year-old behind the wheel of a 4000-pound car or getting ready to have sex? Do we allow a teenager with an underdeveloped frontal lobe to fight and to die for our country out of pure necessity? A RAND study found that soldiers who enlisted after turning 21-years-old did a better jobs on multiple tasks than younger enlistees. Here is the percentage of recruits to each branch of the military from 17-years-old to 20-year-old:

• Army: 69.5%

• Navy: 75.5%

• Marine Corps: 85.2% 

• Air Force: 77.9%

In the Vietnam War, over 35,000 of the 58,148 who died were younger than 21-years-old. Over 100,000 more soldiers were severely or totally disabled, with a majority of those men being under the age of twenty-one. With possible wars with China, Iran, North Korea, or Russia on the horizon, the question of who fights and dies for America matters a great deal.

Perhaps the answer to the inequitable result that our fighting soldiers are barred from basic activities is to allow those men and women the right to drink, smoke, and rent cars. This “if you are old enough to fight, you are old enough to drink” exception fails to address other differences impacted by the frontal lobe development dilemma. The other answer is to make every legal age noted above 21-years-old, including the right to vote. After all, if we don’t believe our teenagers are responsible or physically developed enough to drink, smoke, or drive a car, how are they ready to exercise the most solemn duty of being citizens? I know the Left counts of these easily manipulated voters (you know, with those underdeveloped frontal lobes) to help them win elections, but that shouldn’t drive our public policy.

Either way, we should have a debate about this issue, with the end result being aligning our laws to the same age for all of the above activities.

P.S. For those who use the term “fair share” to claim the “rich” don’t pay their fair share of taxes, please see the chart below. As you can see, the rich pay far in excess in taxes compared to their share of income, as the rest of Americans pay far less in taxes than their share of income. It seems to me that fair share should mean that the percentage of income you make equals the percentage of taxes you pay. Thus, Americans making 40% of income should shoulder 40% of taxes, or what any rationale person would agree is their “fair share." To do otherwise, is, well, unfair, isn’t it?