Alberta Gets It Right (Re-Post)

The Canadian province of Alberta is basically the only place in all of North America that gets it right across the board.  Legal age limits there are as follows:

• Alcohol:  18
• Tobacco and Vaping:  18
• Cannabis:  18
• Gambling:  18
• Guns:  18
• Voting:  18
• Run for office:  18
• General age of majority:  18
• School leaving age:  16
• Driving:  14 for learner permit, 16 for GDL, and 18 for full unrestricted license
• All other age limits:  similar to the rest of Canada and the USA overall (at or below 18)
• Curfew:  None at provincial level, only locally in a few towns here and there (usually 15)

In other words, 18 is the age of majority, and once you are an adult, you are an adult.  Period, full stop.  Some age limits can be lower than that, of course, as there is much room for nuance, but no age limit can ever be higher than that, at least not without extraordinary levels of justification.  And guess what?  The sky didn't fall in Alberta.  No seriously, it really didn't.  Alberta still has yet to get the memo about the supposedly catastrophic effects of full adult rights combined with "underdeveloped" 18-24 year old brains.

In fact, the Alberta Human Rights Act explicitly prohibits age discrimination for anyone over 18, except for senior citizen privileges for people over 55.  Anything else requires truly extraordinary justification, which in practice is about as rare as a unicorn. 

That is really how it should be everywhere, regardless of what exact age limit is chosen for age of majority (which is 18 in most of the world and most of the USA).  It's really not a difficult concept to grasp, as a child can easily understand it, but too many chronological "adults" seem to be unable to do so.  Anything else is a slippery slope, and such slopes are much, much slipperier than they appear.

And for alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis, while underage possession and consumption is illegal, for all three it is basically a mere ticket-level offense with no criminal record.  Unlike many US states have.  And parents are allowed to give their own underage children (but no one else) alcohol at home (within reason), as many but not all states currently do.

The driving thing is of course probably the most jarring one of all to the rest of the world, so allow us to explain.  The global outlier young age limit of 14, rivaled only by South Dakota and a few other rural states, applies ONLY to the learner permit, which is similar to an American style learner permit, with only supervised driving allowed among other restrictions.  To get a GDL (probationary) license, i.e. what Americans often call a "junior" license, you need to be at least 16 and also have had a permit for one year or more, and pass the basic road test which is harder than an American road test.  There are some restrictions to the GDL, such as no more passengers than there are seat belts, and a zero tolerance limit for both alcohol and cannabis, but no night restrictions.  And to graduate to the next level, the full unrestricted license, one must have had the GDL for at least two years regardless of age, be suspension-free for the final year of two years, and pass an advanced road test, the latter of which has since been phased out in 2023 in favor of simply making the basic road test more difficult and more like the advanced road test.  Honestly, making the American road test more difficult would probably be far more effective than any age-based restrictions ever could be.

Alberta in recent years has had one of the lowest overall traffic death rates per vehicle kilometers traveled in Canada, and lower than the USA, so they must be doing something right!

And DUI laws are quite strict there regardless of age as well.  There are swift and certain penalties of immediate but temporary administrative license suspension and vehicle impoundment for BAC as low as 0.05% (or 0.00% if GDL), in addition to any criminal penalties if above 0.08% and/or obviously impaired.  Note that the zero tolerance for GDL is regardless of age.  For DUI cannabis they are also quite strict as well, and we at Twenty-One Debunked think TOO strict since hard per se limits (let alone zero tolerance) don't really make sense for a substance with such complex pharmacokinetics and long detection times, and generally less impairing than alcohol.  At the very least, in the interest of simple justice, they really need to set the testing cutoff for positivity high enough to prevent false positives or innocent positives. 

Thus overall, Alberta is a good model for America to follow.  So what are we waiting for?

Oh, and they also have the best and largest shopping mall in the entire western hemisphere, the West Edmonton Mall.  It makes the even the vaunted Mall of America look a bit "meh" by comparison. 

How America Lost The Plot (Repost)

From the ageist and illiberal abomination that is the 21 drinking age and especially its authoritarian enforcement, to drunk driving, to drug policy, to transportation policy, to environmental policy, to foreign policy, to Tobacco 21, and so on, America has well and truly lost the plot long ago on so many issues.  How long ago, you may ask?  Well, roughly 40 years ago, if not even a bit earlier than that.  But how and why did it happen in the first place?  Why can't our "leaders" (and many of those who keep voting for them) ever seem to see the forest for the trees?

In the book, The Master and His Emissary:  The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist (2009), the author delves into the familiar idea of the left vs right hemispheres of the brain.  Only unlike the usual surface-level analysis in that we see in pop neuroscience, this one is a real deep dive into the truly resounding implications of these brain differences for society and civilization.  Ten years later, it was even made into a documentary, The Divided Brain (2019), by McGilchrist himself along with award-winning documentary filmmaker Vanessa Dylyn, et al.

To summarize:  the two hemispheres of the brain each see the world and process information in fundamentally different ways:  the left brain is more reductionistic in thinking, while the right is more holistic in thinking.  The left is more logical, analytical and detail-oriented, while the right is more creative, intuitive, and sees the bigger picture.  The left is more linear, while the right is more non-linear.  The left sees the map, while the right sees the territory.  And so on.  While both sides are of course quite valuable and necessary, the brain functions best overall when the right brain is in charge.  The left is a great servant, but a terrible master, hence the title of the book.  And Western culture has, for thousands of years, oscillated between favoring the overall relative dominance of each of the two hemispheres.  In recent centuries and decades, as in some other historical periods as well, we have become far too left-brain dominant, with very negative consequences, according to the author.  Not only does the left not really know what the right is doing, but at least half the time the left doesn't even know what the left is doing!  The left brain has thus essentially hijacked society, and that in turn leaves us "increasingly incapable of grappling with critical economic, environmental, and social issues, ones that shape our very future as a species", as the documentary would put it.  I am largely oversimplifying what he said, of course, but that is the basic gist of it overall.

One obvious reason for this excessive left-brain dominance could be due to poorly-designed education, of course.  But another could be that the left brain is faster in terms of processing speed than the right, and the pace of life is undoubtedly much, much faster nowadays than even the recent past.  Though the latter would be more of a chicken-or-the egg question. 

(And to all of the political conservatives and reactionaries who try in vain to shoehorn all of this into their silly left-wing vs right-wing political spectrum, like that one guy on The Daily Sceptic did recently, please get your own ideas.  This book, by a renowned Oxford scholar, truly thoroughly transcends such a naive interpretation of politics.)

A-ha!  That really explains a LOT!

Clearly, the USA (and a good chunk of the world as well, but especially the USA), has only gotten more, not less, left-brain dominant since roughly 40 years ago.  We as a society have been reactively lurching from crisis to crisis, moral panic to moral panic, trend to trend, fad to fad, idol to idol, and propaganda to propaganda, throwing at each whatever left-brained nostrums seem like a good idea at the time without really thinking it through.  But try as they may, the map is NOT the territory.  And their reductionist "solutions" invariably affect not just this thing over here, but also that thing over there, and that other thing all the way over there, and so on.  Oops!

One thing's for sure:  As the late, great Buckminster Fuller famously said, you cannot solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that got us into that problem in the first place.  Unfortunately, not nearly enough people have gotten the memo, it seems.

UPDATE:  Looks like McGilchrist has a sequel to the aforementioned book, titled The Matter with Things, as well.  In it, the following quote is probably the most pertinent:

"[Y]ou could say, to sum up a vastly complex matter in a phrase, that the brain's left hemisphere is designed to help us ap-prehend – and thus manipulate – the world; the right hemisphere to com-prehend it – see it all for what it is."

Food for thought. 

A brain divided against itself cannot stand.

The ONE Thing We Agree With The Late Charlie Kirk On

There is indeed ONE thing we fully agree with the late Charlie Kirk on.  Care to guess what it is?

(Hint:  it is quite literally the very founding cornerstone of Twenty-One Debunked indeed.)

Give up?  

Well, the following tweet from him from 2018 says it all:

AMEN to that!  And we are not aware that he has ever officially reversed or repudiated that stance, even after he recently quit drinking completely himself.

A stopped clock can indeed be right twice a day.

Actually, there is one more thing we agree with him on as well:

For the EPSTEINTH time, RELEASE THE FILES!

(Mic drop)

Never Ask Meme

There is a good meme that I found recently on Reddit about the, shall we say, shadow side of so many famous and otherwise "great" philosophers throughout recorded history:

And to that, we would like to add the following:

Never ask 57% of Michiganders, what they voted for in November 1978.  

(Hint:  it set into motion a sweeping national trend since then, a very dubious, toxic, illiberal, and ageist trend that might not otherwise have occurred, and without it, the USA would have most likely been more like Canada in that regard.  Seriously.  The agony of regret indeed....)

"You Belong To The City" by Glenn Frey, 40 Years Later

The iconic 1985 hit song "You Belong To The City" by Glenn Frey (RIP), is now officially 40 years old.  It came out in September 1985, and was famously used in the TV show Miami Vice.  An excellent song and video, filmed in and taking place in New York City, very nostalgic indeed.

Note that this was literally less than three months before my home state of New York raised the drinking age to 21.  

A Message To Those Who Still Support The 21 Drinking Age And Other Ageist Policies

Here's a message to those who still support the 21 drinking age and other ageist policies:

(Mic drop)

What If We Have Gotten "Age At First Use" All Wrong?

What if we (as a society) have gotten "age at first use" all wrong in regards to addiction?  The conventional wisdom is that the younger a person is when first trying a given substance (whether it's alcohol, tobacco/nicotine, cannabis, or otherwise), the more likely that person is to become addicted or dependent on that substance, and the more severe the problem they will develop, all else being equal.  This idea is often paired with the controversial (and half-baked at best) "gateway drug theory", namely that the use of lesser substances (alcohol, tobacco, and especially cannabis) increases the risk for subsequent use and/or addiction to other, harder substances.  But while the "gateway theory" is relatively easy to debunk, the "age at first use" theory has had much more staying power to date, mainly due to the fairly strong, and seemingly rugged and robust, correlational evidence, often combined with relatively superficial knowledge of human brain development.

However, a new study (albeit not exactly a new idea) strongly implies that at least much of the observed association between earlier age at first use and greater likelihood of addiction is actually due to reverse causation.  That is, kids who were at greater risk of addiction actually showed measurable brain differences compared to those who weren't, even before they took their first sip or puff.  This is truly a paradigm-shifting study indeed, and one that will require everyone to fundamentally rethink their approaches to substance abuse prevention.

That is NOT to say that using substances at an early age (especially before 15) is actually a wise idea, of course.  It still appears to be at least somewhat riskier overall, and the results of twin studies (which completely control for genetics, and largely control for environment) of the past still have yet to be completely explained away.  (For the record, Twenty-One Debunked does NOT endorse or encourage the underage use of any such substances.)  But this latest study shows that the reality is far more nuanced than meets the eye, and that "delay, delay, delay that first drink or use at any cost!" is also probably not the wisest approach to prevention either.  And, of course, by implication, the 21 drinking age (and smoking age and toking age) now has even less support still from The Science.

(We should also note also that people who actually do wait until 21 or older to use such substances, especially alcohol, tend not to be very gung-ho about such substances to begin with, and thus tend to be non-drinkers, non-smokers, and non-users.  That is true for both age at first use, as well as age at first regular use.  It's basically tautological.)

Perhaps this why Denmark and Iceland, who each famously take diametrically opposite approaches to teen drinking (i.e. very permissive vs. very restrictive, respectively), still ultimately end up with remarkably similar alcoholism rates among adults.  Just like the USA vs Canada, basically.

Supreme Court Upholds Age Verification For Adult Sites

Among other terrible rulings yesterday, the increasingly reactionary Supreme Court of the United States upheld Texas' age verification laws for porn sites (and by extension, by several other states with similar laws as well).  As the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reports:

Today’s decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton is a direct blow to the free speech rights of adults. The Court ruled that “no person—adult or child—has a First Amendment right to access speech that is obscene to minors without first submitting proof of age.” This ruling allows states to enact onerous age-verification rules that will block adults from accessing lawful speech, curtail their ability to be anonymous, and jeopardize their data security and privacy. These are real and immense burdens on adults, and the Court was wrong to ignore them in upholding Texas’ law.  

Of course, this ruling is relatively narrow, at least for now:

Importantly, the Court's reasoning applies only to age-verification rules for certain sexual material, and not to age limits in general. We will continue to fight against age restrictions on online access more broadly, such as on social media and specific online features.  

But it still sets a very questionable precedent at best, and we know that it won't stop there without a fight.  Twenty-One Debunked of course vehemently opposes the use of mandatory age verification in general (including, but not limited to, social media platforms) on First Amendment grounds, youth rights grounds, and cybersecurity grounds as well.  Stay tuned, because this fight is NOT over!

Conscription: The Machiavellian Solution In Search Of A Problem (And Why It Will NOT Help The Youth Rights Movement)

With World War III looking more and more likely on the horizon each day that goes by due to current events, it is only a matter of time before one of the biggest American taboos returns to the forefront.  The specter of bringing back the military draft (conscription) has been raised occasionally since it was last abolished in 1973, but it never seemed to catch on since then for a number of reasons:  1) it was unnecessary and redundant with today's technology, 2) it would mess up and dilute the increasingly professional all-volunteer military, 3) most Americans don't support such a policy.  And that's to say nothing of the collective trauma from the ill-fated Vietnam War that has lingered ever since to one degree or another.  

And there are also the fundamental philosophical-ethical arguments against conscription as well, of course, including Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative:  "Always treat humanity as an end itself, and never solely as a means".  And predictably, Niccolo "ends justify the means" Machiavelli himself, often seen as Kant's philosophical foil, was a huge fan of conscription, as he felt that mercenaries would be untrustworthy in terms of loyalty (gotta love that false binary there with no room for nuance whatsoever).  

But every so often, the old zombie arguments (often in superficial shiny new drag) in favor of bringing back the draft resurface like a bad case of herpes.  They can be grouped into the following:  1) Necessity, 2) Equality/Equity, and 3) Social Engineering.  And here we will not only debunk them, but also debone, slice, dice, julienne, and ultimately lay waste to their scorched remains.

The "necessity" argument is probably the only good and coherent argument strong enough to justify the forcible confiscation of labor services (i.e. slavery, which is what conscription really is) of innocent erstwhile civilians in an otherwise free society worthy of the name.  That is, if the necessity in question is actually true.  Spoiler alert:  for most wars throughout history, to say nothing of peacetime, that was not really true.  That is because a) most wars throughout history were unnecessary wars of choice that could have been avoided, and thus inherently wrong except on the side legitimately defending itself, b) there are almost always alternatives to conscription even if a war is necessary, such as (gasp!) paying our troops more, rather than forcibly doing it on the cheap, and c) a country that needs a draft to defend itself deserves to lose.  (And being the world's de facto police force is really NOT a war of necessity, by the way.)  And all of these apply a fortiori with today's technology, which reduces the need for the large numbers of troops in the wars of the more distant past.

(And any fair-weather "allies" halfway around the world who are unwilling or unable to defend themselves without forcing Americans to fight their battles for them, also deserve to lose by the way, a fortiori.)

Indeed, in a truly "just war" that meets all of St. Augustine's criteria (which, let's face it, is about as rare as a unicorn!), conscription would be unnecessary and redundant, since volunteers would be plentiful, at least for a while. 

Of course, to be fair, given a large enough scale AND a long enough duration of a war that really is NOT a war of choice and absolutely can't be pulled out of, the necessity argument CAN perhaps become valid in those select cases.  World War II and the American Civil War are textbook examples of such from history.  (Ditto for, God forbid, World War III, assuming it isn't largely an air and nuclear war, which would supersede this argument, albeit in a bad way).  But these "edge cases" are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Then comes the "equality" or "equity" argument, sometimes called the "poverty draft" or "skin in the game".  That is, poor and working class people (who often join at least partly for economic reasons) are disproportionately overrepresented in the all-volunteer military, and the rich are grossly underrepresented.  That thus makes it easier for our elected leaders and their wealthier supporters to be cavalier about making war in general, knowing that they or their kids won't personally be affected.  Also along with that, it is seen as a gross injustice towards the poor and working class, and especially for racialized minorities, that they do such a disproportionate share of the fighting and dying.  While there is a kernel of truth to both components of this argument, that does NOT change the basic fact that the elites have ALWAYS been able to get themselves out of harm's way, draft or no draft, and practically ALL wars in recorded history have been primarily fought by the poor and working class for the benefit and wealth of the rich.  And the real corrective for that is to simply abolish poverty and the desperation that goes with it with a robust social welfare state including, but not limited to, Universal Basic Income, single-payer Medicare For All, and free college.  And yes, per the iron laws of supply and demand, we will have to pay our troops significantly more than they are paid now, or more accurately, pay them what they are really worth for once!  And, of course, we have got to knock it off with the imperialistic wars of choice!

As for any supposedly "altruistic" or "humanitarian" wars (in the rare cases when it is not merely a cover for imperialism), hey, if you feel like YOU personally have a duty to risk dying for random people halfway around the world for whatever reason, be my guest.  You can even go start your own "Human Shield Brigade" with like-minded folks.  Just don't force or coerce other people to do it for you to soothe YOUR aching conscience, capisce?  Such "vicarious altruism" with other people's blood and treasure is really not altruism at all, but rather egoism in disguise.

(By the way, the mere presence of a draft does NOT preclude a country's leaders from being cavalier about war or getting stuck in long military quagmires.  See Vietnam, for example.  Or more recently, Israel.)

Regardless, in any case, two wrongs do NOT make a right!

Then there is the perennial "social engineering" or  argument, which is probably the most vexing one of all.  Not because is it particularly hard to debunk (it's really quite easy, as you will quickly see), but because of the way it sticks in people's minds so puzzlingly well even after the first two arguments are revealed to be hollow.  Basically, some people arrogantly seem to think that they somehow know what is best for everyone else at a personal level, and believe that they therefore have the right to force or coerce it upon them if they won't willingly accept it "for their own good" and the supposed "greater good" of society.  Such a thing is utterly patronizing and paternalistic, but we see it in so many other areas of life that few of us hardly even notice it anymore.  So when people claim that bring back a (presumably universal) draft would somehow be a panacea for whatever ails society, there will always be some people who listen and agree.  But regardless of how one feels about that and the limits of social engineering in a free society, it is literally the WORST argument there is for forcing people against their will to do something with as much gravitas (and danger) as military service.  Regardless of what ancillary utilitarian benefits there may be to a draft, it all comes back to Machiavelli versus Kant once again.  If we truly believe that human beings are ends in themselves and not just means to an end, then conscription is automatically a non-starter.

Otherwise, it is a Machiavellian solution in search of a problem, whatever that problem may be.

And all this is before we even get into the issue of age.  As Phil Ochs famously sang in the 1960s, "It's always the old, who lead us to the war, it's always the young who fall".  And that remains true to this day.  If we really want to "share the sacrifice equally" like some modern conscription advocates claim to want, then by that logic, perhaps we should draft people in their 40s and 50s and beyond too.  And of course, the very first to be drafted should be the billionaires, followed by the millionaires, and so on down the pyramid.  After all, they are the ones who benefit from it the most, while being historically the most underrepresented.  Or even fairer still, perhaps we could have "consensual conscription" where all wars are put up to a (non-secret) popular vote, and those who vote yes are drafted as needed, followed by those who abstained, and those who voted no would be exempt from the draft.  But otherwise, there is really no such thing as an equitable draft, since drafts are by their very nature discriminatory.

Finally, there also sometimes is brought up the idea that being back the draft would somehow help the youth rights movement.  It is true that the lowering of the voting age, age of majority, and drinking age from 21 to 18 was partly spurred by the Vietnam draft and the idea that it was wrong for someone to be considered old enough to die for their country but too young to vote, drink, etc.  But guess what?  The existence of a draft was neither necessary nor sufficient to effect such a change.  First, the draft was in effect with a draft age of 18 from 1941-1946 and from 1948 to 1973, and yet it took three decades until 1971 to lower the voting age and until 1973 to lower the drinking age and age of majority in most states to 18.  And meanwhile, Canada and the UK didn't have any draft since 1945 and 1960, respectively, and yet they still managed to lower the age for full adult rights to 18 by the early 1970s, which then became an international consensus.  And no Western country, draft or no draft, raised its drinking age from 18 back to 21 except the USA in the 1980s and Lithuania in 2018, the latter country doing so after they brought back the draft in 2016.  And in general, countries that currently have significant conscription don't seem to be more youth-rights friendly than those who don't.

It's more likely that demographics were the biggest factor:  in 1968, fully half of the American population was under 18, and a vast majority was under 25.  The same was true in many other countries well.  Thus they had a strength in numbers that we wouldn't see in today's ageing population.  Bringing back the draft would almost certainly backfire on the youth rights movement today, even if it may invigorate the anti-war movement all the same.

So let's put this zombie idea to rest once and for all.  If WWIII happens, then all bets are off of course, but in any case, it is NOT a net benefit to the youth rights movement.

And to those who still think we should bring back the draft, we say, "YOU FIRST!" Go on.  (crickets)

(Mic drop)

Texas Social Media Ban Dead For Now

The Texas social media ban for anyone under 18 thankfully is now dead (for now) as of May 29, 2025 as the Senate ultimately missed a key deadline for a vote on the bill.  But we must not rest in our laurels just yet, though.  Unfortunately, another bill passed, and was signed into law, that requires app stores to verify age and parental consent for people under 18 to download apps, which takes effect on January 1, 2026 if it doesn't get struck down by the courts in the meantime.  Even if that one is not quite as bad.