The Benefits And Limitations Of Age

This summer, my assignment for AP European History was to read a book about Medieval England and note any surprising or intriguing things I discovered. While I already knew that few individuals lived past the age of 50 during this time period, I never registered that it was the young population that had such a prominent role in shaping society. However, with a much larger median age in the modern day, it is clear that adults run the show nowadays. There are well established rules that regulate our youth. In the United States, adolescents cannot drink or smoke cigarettes until they turn twenty one, whereas no laws regarding the consumption of ale or wine were imposed during the fourteenth century. The question then becomes, at what age should one be able to buy cigarettes or drink alcohol?

Originally, Mesoamericans smoked tobacco for religious and medicinal purposes. But after its introduction to Europe and–due to globalization–other regions as well, smoking became an unhealthy habit as nicotine made cigarettes extremely addictive. Today, tobacco is one of America’s deadliest drugs, as it is a leading cause of heart attack, stroke, and cancer. Thus, it does make sense to regulate cigarettes, and perhaps they need to be regulated a bit more strictly.

The prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain which helps accomplish executive brain functions, is not fully developed until twenty five. My grandfather, at the age of eight, began to smoke: his sister told him that “guys who smoked were cool.” But when he was diagnosed with lung cancer at the age of 72, he quit immediately. If only he had the wise judgment that compelled him to quit at the time he started, then maybe he would not have died due to complications in his treatment. In short, I believe that the legal age to be able to smoke cigarettes or vape should be increased to 25 as opposed to the current age of 21 because smoking at too young of an age poses a great threat to an individual’s health.

On the other hand, my opinion towards alcohol differs. While I do concede that alcohol contributes to fatal injuries caused by car crashes, domestic violence, and mental health illnesses, I can only attribute these consequences to severe intoxication as a result of culture and other attitudes towards alcohol. Ingrained for centuries in Islamic society, for example, is the prohibition of alcohol in the Quran; thus, it is no surprise that particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, drinking is very uncommon. Still, in Southern European culture, dating back to the ancient Romans and Greeks, drinking, especially wine, in moderation forms part of daily life (and is known to provide health benefits too); ancient society, nevertheless, did not approve of drunkenness.

Likewise in the United States, drinking is a taboo. The legal drinking age is 21–one of the highest in the world–and this law is problematic. For instance, imagine you are a freshman in college or just about to turn twenty one. All your life, you’ve been restricted from drinking alcohol, but after being unleashed into the real world without any guidance or experience, you get introduced to alcohol and begin drinking irresponsibly. Then, you face the punitive consequences, the guilt, and the shame. This scenario encompasses my perspective of the flaws of American drinking culture.

I foster an approach similar to that of Europe by which parents serve smaller amounts of alcohol to their children, who are then able to drink responsibly when they turn 17 or 18. Obviously, American drinking culture cannot change immediately, and so I thereby propose that the US slowly lowers the drinking age until it reaches 17 or 18.

Luca Raffa