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Consent = 15
Smoking Pot (I believe in legalization)/Driving = 16
Voting/Marriage = 17
Smoking/Drinking/Military enlistment = 18
My feeling is, there aren't enough people voting as it is-- I am not in favor of any further restrictions on who gets to vote, and for that matter, let's knock a year off the minimum age, and let felons vote, even in the slammer.
The Federal age of consent should be 15, and if individual States want to go lower, I have no problem with that. Teenagers fuck. No sense letting some dumb cluck daddy hand his daughter's boyfriend over to the cops to get his life ruined as a sex offender. And give Roman Polanski some peace, the guy is ancient, and that was a long time ago.
I'm OK with driving being at age 16, and when the glorious day comes when America gets its head out of its ass and legalizes herb, I think 16 should be the potsmoking legal minimum age. It gives the kids something to party out with, and it's safer than lowering the drinking age.
No reason why kids are any less ready to get married at 17 rather than 18. Took me until I was 35 to feel even remotely mature enough and together enough to get married. Some dumb fuck thinks they're all set for it at 18, might as well let 'em get down to it at 17, it's no more stupid.
Smoking and Military Enlistment are both dangerous, and probably require second thought before beginning. Might as well keep it at 18. Drinking is also dangerous, but if you're old enough to smoke, and you're old enough to risk getting your nads shot off in the middle of back-ass nowhere for America's oil interests, it seems pretty stupid not to let you drink....
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Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.
(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)
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