Defusing The Powder Keg

Or, "It's the Final Countdown!"

The 21 drinking age is an ageist and illiberal abomination that has NO place in a free society.  Its very existence to this day is evidence that we are living in the wrong timeline.  And the sooner it is jettisoned to the trash heap of history, the better.

Twenty-One Debunked has, unwaveringly and  uncompromisingly, since our founding in 2009, sought to speedily lower the legal drinking age (in every sense) to 18, and not a day later.  Period.  That is, the same rights that people over 21 currently enjoy, should be democratized to include 18-20 year olds as well, and yesterday is NOT soon enough!  That is our North Star for the near term, basically.  (And for the very long term?  Don't ask!) The relative purgatory and limbo of setting it at 19, 20, or a split/graduated age limit first has always been best considered a journey, NOT a destination. 

That said, doing so is a LOT easier said than done politically.   The Overton Window is clearly NOT in our favor, to put it mildly (that brief moment in the late 2000s notwithstanding, whose ship has long since sailed).  And while the objections to lowering it to 18 are essentially specious and spurious, they are not entirely pulled out of the ether, either.  So much "referred pain", as it were, is also present as well.  Not least of which is the Law of Eristic Escalation (i.e. Imposition of Order = Escalation of Chaos), which as a corollary, causes a "chaos deficit" to compound over time.  This sets a massive "powder keg" that is best defused carefully and gingerly, to avoid too much chaos unleashed all at once in the short term, and the reactionary backlash that would follow.  Plus, the fear of it would make it harder to get any bill that would lower the drinking age to have a prayer of passing.

So here is a potential "menu of options" to defuse the powder keg and its associated fears, and make the age-lowering bill easier to pass, and all of which should have a sunset clause built in so as not to defeat the purpose:

• Keeping the Zero Tolerance driving BAC age limit at 21 for the time being, or better yet, expanding it to include the first two or three years of having a driver's license, or 21, whichever is longer, largely similar to some other countries with lower drinking ages.  And keep that in place for the first couple of years at least.  (To defuse the fear of DUI.)
• Keeping the purchase age limit for kegs, cases, and other large quantities of alcohol at 21 for the time being, reasonable limits on quantities purchased per transaction, and no more than one transaction per person per store per day for people under 21.  And keep that in place for the first year or couple of years.  (To defuse the fear of high school keggers, as well as high school drinking more generally.)
• Phasing down the drinking age, or at least the purchase age (especially on-premise at bars and restaurants), by one month each day.  That is, 20 years 11 months, 20 years 10 months....until it is 18 years and 0 months.  And that phasedown will take all of....36 days to complete.  (Hat tip to a guy on Facebook many years ago who came up with that idea, which we call "The Final Countdown", like the famous song by Europe.) (To defuse the fear of overall chaos in general, especially at bars and surrounding areas.)
• Best done through explicitly allowing "local option" to do so, and ideally kept only for a limited time, perhaps we could also set only the off-premise purchase age (but NOT drinking age, furnishing age, or on premise purchase age!) to 19 without conditions, and 18 only with a college or military ID, or proof of high school diploma or GED.  (To further defuse any remaining fear of high school drinking and straw purchasing for younger friends.)
• "25 Mile Rule": To alleviate fears of "blood borders", for on-premise service in any bar or restaurant within 25 miles from the border of a neighboring state with a higher drinking age, no out-of-state IDs will be accepted for anyone from that state for anyone under that age, except 1) students within a college town (or a 5 mile radius from campus) showing valid college ID, 2) overnight guests being served in a hotel where they are staying.
• Perhaps temporarily (for the first few months or first year or so) keep the off-premise purchase age at 21 (or 20) for hard liquor, or any beverages exceeding 15% or 20% ABV, similar to what Finland (off-premise) and Norway (both on and off-premise) currently do.  (To further defuse fears.)
• (Holds nose while grudgingly saying this) Continue allowing bars and clubs to set their own age limits higher than the legal drinking age, which many already do, and/or set a higher cover charge for younger folks.  (To defuse the (mostly apocryphal) fear of young people engaging in rowdiness, chaos, "pregaming", and arriving already at least half-drunk and not buying much at the bar.)
• And be sure to include a severability clause!

Indeed, while we are NOT wedded to any of these, and would rather NOT start out with any compromised position lest we have to compromise further, we endorse and strongly encourage at least the first three items on the list in the short term.  And of course, it should go without saying that it should be accompanied by a renewed crackdown on drunk driving, drunk violence, drunk vandalism, and drunk and disorderly conduct, for ALL ages.  For DUI specifically, combining sobriety checkpoints (subject to constitutionally-correct protocols), roving and saturation patrols, and especially "fish in a barrel" aka "Jack in the box" (police waiting patiently outside of bars for would-be drunk drivers to stumble to their cars, and gotcha!) would essentially make obsolete any concerns of increasing drunk driving, even if the drinking age was lowered to 18 overnight in one fell swoop.

Simple.  Elegant.  Surgical. 

So what are we waiting for?  "It's the Final Countdown!"

Have A Safe And Happy Memorial Day Weekend

This weekend is the weekend of Memorial Day, often known as the unofficial first day of summer and National BBQ Day. But let's remember what it really is--a day to honor all of the men and women of our armed forces who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country, past and present. And that of course includes all of those who died serving our country before they were legally old enough to drink. Let us all take a moment of silence to honor them.

As for Candy Lightner, the ageist turncoat founder of MADD who had the chutzpah and hubris to go on national TV in 2008 and publicly insult our troops, all in a vain attempt to defend the ageist abomination that is the 21 drinking age, may her name and memory be forever blotted out. 

And as always, arrive alive, don't drink and drive. It's just NOT worth it, period. And it's very simple to prevent. If you plan to drive, don't drink, and if you plan to drink, don't drive. It's not rocket science. Designate a sober driver, call a cab or rideshare, use public transportation, crash on the couch, or even walk if you have to. Or simply don't drink--nobody's got a gun to your head. Problem solved.

(Mic drop)

A Generational Ban On Everything

NOTE:  The following is SATIRE!

The UK has just famously passed a generational ban on tobacco.  That is, anyone born on or after January 1, 2009 will be permanently banned from ever buying any tobacco products legally.  Like, ever.  It seems that the days of "prohibition" somehow being a dirty word are quite numbered indeed.

But why stop at tobacco?  Why not apply that to ALL adult rights, privileges, and responsibilities?  Why don't we simply do that the for the age of majority in general?  Based on the general cutoff year for Generation Alpha, how about simply declaring anyone born after January 1, 2010 to be perpetual minors?  Or perhaps until they prove themselves otherwise through some arbitrary tests?  After all, kids today are supposedly taking longer to mature than previous generations, perhaps even a permanent state of arrested development.  So why not have the law reflect that?

If you were born before that date, the status quo rules apply, and you are thus grandfathered in by the skin of your teeth.  You truly lucked out.  But if you were born after that date, you are SOL.

How will this affect you, if born after that date?  Not only will you be forbidden from buying or using alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, or any other age restricted products (there is always the black market to fall back on), but also voting, driving, contracts, consent to sex, marriage, and pretty much everything else.  Oh, and you will also be permanently banned from social media as well.

But don't worry, Gen Alpha, you WILL still be fully able to join the military and go to war at 18 if we, your betters, deem it necessary for you to fight for the wealth of the few....I mean "national security" and "making the world safe for democracy!"  

I mean, it's kinda like those video games you used to be allowed to play before we banned them for your generation as well.  Only when you die, you do NOT respawn, and there is NO reset button.

And if you are caught doing anything illegal, including the new "status offenses" you will be subject to, rest assured that you WILL be tried and punished as adults.  That's because we, your betters, can be as whimsical as we want.  You do what we say, and we'll do what we wanna do.  Because reasons.  Or something.

Now, if you behave yourselves like good boys and girls, we MIGHT just open up a pathway for you to prove yourselves and earn "conditional adulthood".  For a fee, you can go take some tests of our choosing at this newly created agency of ours that looks and feels suspiciously like a clone of the DMV, of course.  If you pass by our arbitrary standards, and we are in a good mood that day, then you will be treated thereafter as a quasi-adult with some of the conditional privileges typically associated with adulthood.  Your ID will be upgraded to reflect that, and will be colloquially known as a "freedom tag" or "passport to freedom".  But remember, this is entirely conditional on following the rules that go along with it.  Break those rules, and you will go back to being a minor, and (in a cartoon villain voice) "you belong to the state".

Those rules include a very strict work requirement, by the way.  You will work wherever we assign you to, for as many hours as we assign you to.  And you shall report directly to your overseer....I mean supervisor, which literally means the same thing, only Latinized to make it sound nicer.  Not like you could get out of all that by remaining a perpetual minor, of course.  You would have to work either way, because we said so.  It will just be done in somewhat better taste as a conditional quasi-adult.

Remember, as the saying goes, "work will set you free".  Which admittedly sounds much better in the original German.

(Wow, that escalated quickly!)

Again this is SATIRE.  So let's keep it that way!

Why That One Particular Issue?

Twenty-One Debunked, hence our name, has long been advocating for lowering the 21 drinking age to no higher than 18 since our founding in 2009, and since then has also advocated lower the other emerging 21 age limits (tobacco, cannabis, etc.) to no higher than 18 as well, for the same reasons.  We believe setting any age limits higher than the legal age of majority (18 in nearly all states, and nearly all countries as well), especially (but not only) ones that are in any way related to bodily autonomy and/or cognitive liberty, is unjust, unethical, unconstitutional, and ultimately does far more harm than good.  And it clearly has NO place in any free society worthy of the name.  Period.

But doesn't that make us a single-issue, one-trick pony, you say?  Surely there must be more pressing issues than that, right?  And surely even the youth rights movement has more pressing issues, right?  It's not like merely lowering the drinking age to 18 would result in any sort of utopia in practice, anymore than legalizing weed would have somehow ushered in the Age of Aquarius, right?

Well, as the saying goes, "the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."  Natch.  We have already established that adultism is THE central keystone Jenga block of the greater kyriarchy, hands down.  And while striking the root of the problem is ultimately far more important than striking the branches, the fact remains that some of the branches get in the way of even reaching that root in the first place.  Few branches are as obnoxiously obtrusive as the 21 drinking age, toxic and corrosive to society, an outlier among outliers from a global perspective, and utterly symbolic of literally everything that is wrong the the USA in the current timeline since the 1980s.  It is truly an egregious affront to the America that could have been.

We have said it before, and we'll say it again.  Let America Be America Again, and lower the drinking age to 18.  If you're old enough to go to war, you're old enough to go to the bar.  

'Nuff said.

Adultism: The Keystone Of The Kyriarchy

Kyriarchy.  Literally meaning "a rule by a lord or master" in Greek, it is an important term of art originally coined by feminist theologian Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza.  As Wikipedia describes:

In feminist theory, kyriarchy (/ˈkaɪriɑːrki/ KY-ree-arr-kee) is a social system or set of connecting social systems built around domination, oppression, and submission. The word was coined by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza in 1992 to describe her theory of interconnected, interacting, and self-extending systems of domination and submission, in which a single individual might be oppressed in some relationships and privileged in others. It is an intersectional extension of the idea of patriarchy beyond gender. Kyriarchy encompasses forms of dominating hierarchies in which the subordination of one individual or group to another is internalized and institutionalized.

It is essentially one big intersectional pyramid scheme under which we all are forced to live, including patriarchy/sexism, racism, classism, ableism, ageism, heterosexism, cissexism, capitalism, authoritarianism, and basically every other -ism in existence.  We are all both privileged and oppressed, both slaves and slavers, in one way or another, basically.

But there is ONE particular -ism that is often overlooked:  adultism.  Also known as childism, and part of adulto-patriarchy, it is a particular form of systemic ageist oppression and discrimination that is directed against children and young people who are considered non-adults.  And that is more than just a mere oversight, but rather it is by design.  Adultism is literally the keystone Jenga block of the whole entire pyramid scheme of the kyriarchy.  Pull it out, and the whole entire edifice collapses at once, in other words.  So of course it would have to be deliberately obscured by the powerful and privileged to protect that very same pyramid scheme from which they benefit.

Wait, what?  You mean adultism is what is propping the whole system up all along?  Absolutely.  All of the other -isms are imputed, or based on, adultism to one degree or another, as children and youth are literally the OG "suspect class" of people systemically denied full civil and human rights.  And often it is cleverly disguised as "protection".  Does the word "infantilization" ring any bell?  How about "paternalism"?  Or even the word "patriarchy"?  Look at the literal origins of these words.  Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.  Everything else is basically window dressing in this overall Ponzi pyramid scheme, which also functions as a protection RACKET as well.

That is NOT to say that adults are actually better off on balance under adultism and adulto-patriarchy.  They benefit from it in a relative sense, while in an absolute sense, most adults (of all ages) are still worse off on balance under adultism than they would be without it, at least in the long run.  Much like how patriarchy notoriously chews up and spits out most men as "collateral damage" as well, so to does adultism backfire on adults, and makes everyone less free.  The concept of Ubuntu comes to mind, as does the Law of Karma.

And as the late, great Margaret Mead famously noted decades ago, we are moving into what she calls a "prefigurative" society.  She had defined a "prefigurative" culture as a modern, rapidly changing society where children and youth effectively become the teachers of their elders, rather than the other way around.  In this, her third type of culture (after "postfigurative" and "cofigurative"), the future is unknown, making adult experience obsolete.  Thus, adulto-patriarchy is rapidly becoming obsolete.

The antidote, therefore, is Youth Liberation.

So does that mean that we should just abolish all age limits overnight, and then the entire kyriarchy will collapse at once, and we will all live happily ever after?  Well, not so fast.  First of all, being the central keystone Jenga block of the kyriarchy, adultism is HEAVILY and JEALOUSLY guarded, and surrounded with booby traps galore.  Even those who claim to want to "smash the kyriarchy" (or parts of it) still tend to consciously or unconsciously guard it.  Secondly, even if all age limits were somehow abolished overnight, they could be very quickly replaced by something else equally arbitrary and even more questionable in practice, such as Dr. Robert Epstein's (no relation) assimilationist idea of "competency testing".  Not only would that be ableism as imputed adultism (and vice-versa), but that would in fact likely entrench adult supremacy even further by essentially overvaluing "adultness", which is just as much of a social construct as childhood and adolescence.  And finally, the 19th century (and earlier, pick your poison) should loom large as a cautionary tale in that regard:  there were indeed far fewer and lower age limits back then, but children and young people really weren't any less oppressed.  In many ways, the bottom 99% of children and youth were more oppressed back then, as de facto serfs (if not slaves) under such extremely laissez-faire capitalism.  Many of these age limits (things like child labor laws and age of consent come to mind especially), were in fact created as textbook examples of Chesterton's Fences:  before you remove a fence, make sure you know why it was put up in the first place!

It's almost like treating children as miniature adults, while still maintaining adult supremacy, isn't anywhere near as liberating as it sounds.  Gee, who woulda thunk it?

(Oh, and notice that the voting age was 21 back then, as was the general age of majority?  And how government was much smaller, but privatized tyranny, both family and otherwise, was much larger?  Moral of the story?  Always beware whenever adults in power choose to selectively dole out some freedoms to young people while also withholding others.  Natch.)

Thus, taking a meat cleaver approach willy-nilly to all official age limits without changing the underlying social structure is clearly folly in more ways than one, and will NOT actually solve the problem of adultism OR kyriarchy.  It is multifaceted, and must thus be tackled from many different angles.  That is not to say that some age limits should not be lowered or jettisoned at once (the voting age and drinking age come to mind, along with curfew laws and such). And we certainly should NOT add new age limits or raise any existing ones further!  But otherwise, it needs to be dealt with VERY carefully and gingerly, or else at everyone's peril.

For example, in a just society, we would need to have a VERY robust social safety net that would make the Nordics blush, and even Universal Basic Income (UBI) in place before we could even consider phasing out child labor restrictions, lest such labor become economically coerced like it was back in the day (and still is today in much of the developing world).  With NO apologies to glibertarians or paleoconservatives, just societies need to have "just transitions".  The cart clearly does NOT go before the horse!

And speaking of putting carts before horses, it should also be noted that, without Youth Liberation happening first, the often vague and nebulous idea of "the village" raising the children would really just be building a bigger prison with more guards.

After all, negative liberty (freedom from) and positive liberty (freedom to) are NOT mutually exclusive, but are rather two sides of the same coin.  You cannot truly have one without the other.

But yes, once adultism is gone, and young people are finally liberated for good, the kyriarchy will collapse and go on the trash heap of history for good.  In other words, when youth are finally free, we will ALL be free at last.  So what are we waiting for?

Smash the adulto-patriarchy, smash the kyriarchy!  Tear down the "walled garden" prison!  And let the planetary healing begin!

UK's "Generational Ban" On Tobacco Has Passed. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Well, it's official now.  The UK's "Generational Ban" on all tobacco products has now become law.  Effective January 1, 2027, this law permanently bans anyone born after January 1, 2009 from buying any cigarettes or tobacco products, herbal cigarettes, or rolling papers.  And yes, like New Zealand's now-repealed effort that would have exempted vape products, the UK's ban does NOT include non-combustible nicotine products, including vapes and presumably pouches, which shall remain at 18 (for now).  Though it does increase restrictions on vaping, banning its use in locations where smoking is already prohibited, the generational ban does not apply to vapes. Thank God for small mercies, right?

Read that again.

It's safe to say that Twenty-One Debunked opposes this generational ban 100%, full stop.  Not because we like tobacco or nicotine products (we do not encourage the use of these things at all by anyone, period), but because it is inherently ageist, illiberal, impractical, and a massive government overreach.  Not to mention it is bloody daft, as the locals would say there.  And it also clearly sets a very questionable precedent as well:  what is the next thing to be banned in like fashion?  Hmmmmm.

The UK should have just kept the age limit at 18.  Their tobacco taxes are already very high, and the black market is rife, so there is not much wiggle room there as a strategy now.  But they could still have done other things to further reduce smoking rates, like 1) cap the amount of nicotine in combustible tobacco, or at least ready-made cigarettes, to a non-addictive level, 2) ban all non-tobacco additives in tobacco products, 3) restrict the sale of tobacco products to only dedicated tobacco stores or other adults-only stores, and stuff like that.  Otherwise, they should butt out.

Meanwhile, the black market is clearly salivating like a Pavlov's Dog as we speak, per the Law of Unintended Consequences....

Australia is already a cautionary tale, with their ridiculously high taxes on combustible tobacco paired with their ban on nicotine-containing vapes.  Imagine this, but at a MUCH larger scale.

(And by "ridiculously high taxes", we mean the price of a pack of legal 20 cigarettes in Australia is a whopping $40 to $50 Australian dollars on average, or $30 to $45 US dollars.  Let that sink in!)

And now, over to you, America.  Those watching this from this side of the pond should take this as a warning, NOT an example!

ERRATUM:  The original version of this article stated incorrectly that this generational ban applied to vapes and pouches, which has since been corrected.  But apparently it does unfortunately apply to (non-tobacco) herbal cigarettes and rolling papers, regardless of whether or not they are used for tobacco.