Weed legalized in Cali and age to buy Tobacco is raised to 21. Seems weird to celebrate both.

[Hekate]

36. The original intent of "age of majority" laws was to protect youngsters until they matured

It was not perfect; nothing ever is; but it's easy to see why full legal adulthood used to be 21. Even without sophisticated modern analysis of how the human brain develops, our ancestors could easily observe behavior associated with that development. Among Roman Catholics, the age of First Confession is 7 y.o., in line with development of an ethical/moral sense of the universe. First Communion is at age 12, in line with another stage of maturity. And they figured this out centuries ago.

I have seen laws seesaw in my lifetime, always under some kind of public pressure. Really, alcohol should not be sold to teenagers, nor should tobacco. I put pot in the same category. It's just too easy for the young brain to become addicted to substances that by and large are simply recreational/occasional for full adults.

So you ask why I as a Californian supported both measures. As regards cannabis, the "war on drugs" applied to pot has done nothing but fill our prisons for no good reason. Prohibition of alcohol also failed miserably. Treat cannabis like alcohol, is my opinion.

Tobacco should not be banned, either, and for the same reasons. But because the Big Tobacco companies knowingly have peddled their addictive product to youngsters as young as 10 (see: Joe Camel) I really would not grieve if they were forbidden to advertise. Every time consumption of their product starts to drop, they come up with something else. Currently it's vaping. They try to get them very young because studies have shown that if a person gets to 21 without cigarettes, they very likely will never smoke at all.

The least we can do is protect the majority of children and young adults by making it illegal to sell them recreational drugs until the age of 21. Education has helped a lot, but so does the long arm of the law.

As for the age of driving -- my goodness, you certainly are throwing in everything but the kitchen sink. Same thing: brain maturity.