Introduction Age is merely a number. People should be treated with respect regardless of the number they are pressured to fitting in. Issues What is the age of responsibility The age of responsibility is the age at which someone is capable of making responsible choices for himself or herself. Clearly, for the purposes of creating laws, a specific age must be selected. However, human beings mature at individual rates. For example there might be an emancipated sixteen year old that is very responsible or a twenty five year old that still has not matured to their full capacity. I. When should a person be considered to be an adult A person should be considered an adult when they are mature enough to make smart …show more content…
This means you are a citizen with rights and obligations. In america you are considered an adult at eighteen. Yet you do not have all the rights that other adults have. You will have to wait three more years before you are allowed to purchase alcohol and cigarettes. The legal drinking age is set at eighteen years of age in many countries. Setting the legal drinking age at 21 in America causes two main things. First, it prevents the access of alcohol to eighteen year olds who can later distribute/supply it to their younger high school friends. Second, it tempts teens to rebel and experiment. The idea that they can drive, vote, serve in the military and handle weapons, yet can not be trusted to consume alcohol is inconsistent and cause for rebellion. According to David Sessions, in his article Drinking Facts: Alcohol Problems Around the World, “Americans aged fifteen and up drink only three-quarters as much alcohol as Europeans, but are far more likely to be involved in fatal alcohol-related accidents or die from other alcohol-related causes. There’s no single reason Americans are less responsible with alcohol, but some speculate that a higher legal drinking age in the U.S. leads to more destructive underage drinking