In the past week there have been calls for under-21s to face tougher drink driving rules than other adults and London Mayor Boris Johnson is now mooting restrictions on under-21s buying booze. And these calls follow hikes in the legal age for buying cigarettes and knives, plans to raise the education leaving age and talk of increasing the driving age.
This trend obviously undermines the Votes at 16 campaign - after all, why should you be able to choose the government if you're deemed too immature to buy a kitchen knife? But this trend is harmful to more than just calls to lower the voting age.
It removes responsibility from those who are pretty much adults and perpetuates young people as children at a time when they should be adjusting to the rights and accompanying responsibilities of adulthood.
It is also an admission of failure by society and government. Rather than deal with difficult cultural, educational and economic problems, we resort to unimaginative bans that give the illusion of action but do little to make young adults aware that they are responsible for their own actions.
Did the decision to up the age at which you can buy knives to 18 actually stop any knife crime? Of course not. But it has stopped responsible young adults who can live independently from being able to buy razor blades to shave with.
The longer we try to keep young adults in a state of childhood, the less likely it is they will have the chance to take on responsibilities when support from family, youth groups or schools is not on hand. We need to accept that adults should be free to make the wrong as well as right decisions - whether these are to start smoking, gamble away their wages or get blind drunk.
The law exists not to send messages but to step in when adults use their freedoms to put others in danger, for example through drunk driving or knife crime. Delaying the time when people get to make these decisions for themselves does nothing to change the thinking behind bad choices - it just puts off the time when we must take responsibility.
- Tristan Donovan, news editor, Children & Young People Now.
