Not all legislation is filed with the intent of making law. Occasionally a bill is introduced to make a point. Take, for example, S.212, now pending in the Vermont Legislature, which proposes to ban the possession of cellphones by people under the age of 21.
The bill, introduced by state Sen. John Rodgers, a Democrat who represents the Essex-Orleans district, cites the use of cellphones among young people in distracted driving accidents; in bullying and threats; in the radicalization and recruitment of extremists; and in researching previous mass shootings on the way to committing another one.
It concludes this way: “In light of the dangerous and life-threatening consequences of cell phone use by young people, it is clear that persons under 21 years of age are not developmentally mature enough to safely possess them, just as the General Assembly has concluded that persons under 21 years of age are not mature enough to possess firearms, smoke cigarettes, or consume alcohol.”
For this enterprising legislative effort, Rodgers suffered the fate of many an aspiring satirist. The New York Times reported on Sunday that he was deluged with outraged messages that accused him of abetting the establishment of a nanny state in the Green Mountains.
Perhaps had those critics known that Rodgers is a foremost champion of Second Amendment rights, they would have realized that their anger was misplaced and that the bill was not meant to be taken seriously. The senator was merely pointing out an inconsistency — or absurdity — that vexes not only Vermont but also the entire nation, which cannot seem to decide when a young person becomes an adult. In particular, Rodgers was incensed that in 2018, the Legislature made it unlawful to sell firearms to people under age 21 in most circumstances, while 18-year-olds must register for the military draft and can volunteer to go to war.
And, of course, that’s not all. Eighteen-year-olds are entitled to perform the most solemn duty of a citizen in a democracy, voting. They can marry, raise children, own property, hold down a job, pay taxes and be imprisoned, but until they reach the age of 21, they cannot legally buy alcohol or tobacco. In other words, they bear adult responsibilities but cannot exercise adult privileges.
Congress in December banned the sale of all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes and vaping cartridges, to people under 21, following the lead of several states that had previously raised the smoking age on their own, including Vermont, where it was 21, and New Hampshire, where it was 19.
As the Times reported, for most of the previous century, the drinking age was tied to the voting age, which was then 21. But in the midst of the Vietnam War, when thousands of young American men were being drafted to fight, Congress amended the voting age to 18, appropriately reasoning that if you were old enough to die for your country, you were old enough to help pick its leaders. States then dropped the drinking age to 18 to match. But in the 1980s, amid concern about auto fatalities involving drinking and driving by teenagers, Congress required states to raise the drinking age to 21 or risk forfeiting 10% of their federal highway aid.
There’s plenty of research showing that the brain is not fully developed until about age 25, with all that implies for an individual’s ability to exercise good judgment and assess risk. That does not, in our view, make the current contradictory regime of responsibilities and rights tenable. In order to earn respect, laws must to be shown to have a coherent, rational basis. The rule of law depends on it. If Rodgers prompts people to think a little bit more about how this fundamental contradiction can be fairly resolved, his tongue-in-cheek legislation will have performed a useful service.