Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Michael Si­mon Vic­tor de la Bastide has ques­tioned the log­ic of telling 18-year-olds they are ma­ture enough to vote, mar­ry, dri­ve, join the Po­lice Ser­vice and make oth­er ma­jor life de­ci­sions, but not ma­ture enough to de­cide whether to drink al­co­hol.

De la Bastide raised the is­sue yes­ter­day as the Sen­ate de­bat­ed the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Al­co­hol, Cannabis, Dan­ger­ous Drugs, Gam­bling and To­bac­co) Bill, 2026, which seeks to raise the le­gal age for al­co­hol and to­bac­co from 18 to 21, and for cannabis and gam­bling to 25.

The leg­is­la­tion was passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last Wednes­day by a 23-10 vote, with­out Op­po­si­tion sup­port.

De la Bastide ar­gued that the Gov­ern­ment had not suf­fi­cient­ly jus­ti­fied why adults be­tween 18 and 20 should lose a choice they have been legal­ly en­ti­tled to make for decades.

“If Par­lia­ment, the State, so­ci­ety is sat­is­fied that at the age of 18 a per­son is suf­fi­cient­ly men­tal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly de­vel­oped to make weighty de­ci­sions” on those mat­ters, de la Bastide asked, “then how can it be said that such per­sons are not suf­fi­cient­ly de­vel­oped to make their own de­ci­sions with re­spect to their con­sump­tion of al­co­hol?”

He al­so ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s stat­ed ob­jec­tive of pro­tect­ing young peo­ple.

De la Bastide said the an­swer ap­peared to be pro­tect­ing them from the con­se­quences of their own de­ci­sion to con­sume al­co­hol by tak­ing that de­ci­sion away from them.

“This is a very pa­ter­nal­is­tic ap­proach,” he said, ar­gu­ing it amount­ed to the State telling young adults that it knew what was in their best in­ter­est.

The In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor stressed that his po­si­tion was nei­ther nov­el nor sim­ply op­po­si­tion for op­po­si­tion’s sake, not­ing that de­bates over the ap­pro­pri­ate drink­ing age have tak­en place in­ter­na­tion­al­ly for decades.

Rather than pro­hi­bi­tion, de la Bastide pro­posed a three-pronged ap­proach to re­duc­ing al­co­hol con­sump­tion among young peo­ple: an in­ten­sive and sus­tained pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign, ban­ning or tight­ly reg­u­lat­ing al­co­hol ad­ver­tis­ing and spon­sor­ship, and us­ing tax­es and pric­ing poli­cies to make al­co­hol less af­ford­able.

He ar­gued that sim­ply rais­ing the drink­ing age could dri­ve al­co­hol con­sump­tion un­der­ground, mak­ing en­force­ment dif­fi­cult and po­ten­tial­ly en­cour­ag­ing dan­ger­ous prac­tices such as binge drink­ing.

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge, how­ev­er, strong­ly re­ject­ed de la Bastide’s rea­son­ing, chal­leng­ing the com­par­i­son be­tween drink­ing and the oth­er rights and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties ac­quired at 18.

Sturge said vot­ing, join­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice, join­ing the mil­i­tary and ob­tain­ing a dri­ver’s li­cence were “re­spon­si­ble” or “pos­i­tive” ac­tiv­i­ties and came with safe­guards.

“There are safe­guards with re­spect to vot­ing. There are safe­guards with re­spect to the Coast Guard.”

He added, “Vot­ing is a pos­i­tive thing. Join­ing the mil­i­tary is a pos­i­tive thing. Join­ing the po­lice is a pos­i­tive thing. Get­ting your li­cence is a pos­i­tive thing. Is drink­ing pun­cheon a pos­i­tive thing?”

Sturge then turned the ar­gu­ment di­rect­ly back on de la Bastide.

“Is va­p­ing a pos­i­tive thing? Would you pour a drink, a pun­cheon, for your 18-year-old? Would you give a vape to your 18-year-old?” he asked.

The De­fence Min­is­ter ar­gued that the Gov­ern­ment was deal­ing with the prac­ti­cal con­se­quences of sub­stance abuse in com­mu­ni­ties, say­ing al­co­hol, drugs and gam­bling did not af­fect on­ly the in­di­vid­ual mak­ing the choice.

He said ad­dic­tion, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, road deaths, fam­i­ly in­sta­bil­i­ty and ad­di­tion­al pres­sure on the pub­lic health sys­tem could all ex­tend the con­se­quences to oth­ers.

Sturge al­so re­ject­ed the sug­ges­tion that adult­hood at 18 meant the State should no longer in­ter­vene to pro­tect young peo­ple.

“Do you stop tak­ing ad­vice at 18 when you’re be­ing cheat­ed up­on? Or you have a se­ri­ous life-chang­ing sit­u­a­tion? Do you stop ask­ing mom­my or granny?” he asked.

“So what you are telling us is that we must not leg­is­late to pro­tect our young peo­ple. We know bet­ter.”