Attorney: Rights not absolute; new limits can withstand constitutional challenge

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Se­nior Coun­sel Lee Mer­ry says the Gov­ern­ment’s new age re­stric­tions on al­co­hol, to­bac­co, cannabis and gam­bling, as well as its manda­to­ry iden­ti­fi­ca­tion re­quire­ments, would not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly breach cit­i­zens’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

Mer­ry says the crit­i­cal ques­tion in any le­gal chal­lenge would be whether the Gov­ern­ment can demon­strate that the re­stric­tions serve a le­git­i­mate pur­pose and go no fur­ther than nec­es­sary to achieve it.

“It’s im­por­tant to un­der­stand that un­der our Con­sti­tu­tion, the hu­man rights that are set out are not ab­solute rights,” Mer­ry said.

“Even if the Gov­ern­ment pass­es a law that in­fringes on one of those rights, and even if it’s passed by on­ly a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty, if it is that the State, the Gov­ern­ment can prove that there’s some le­git­i­mate aim for the law, and that the law does no more than is nec­es­sary to achieve that aim, then the law is go­ing to be up­held.”

The Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Al­co­hol, Cannabis, Dan­ger­ous Drugs, Gam­bling and To­bac­co) Bill, 2026, re­quires on­ly a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty for pas­sage.

It cleared the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives 23-10, with the Gov­ern­ment us­ing its ma­jor­i­ty to pass the leg­is­la­tion with­out Op­po­si­tion sup­port.

The bill rais­es the le­gal age for al­co­hol and to­bac­co from 18 to 21 and sets the thresh­old for cannabis and gam­bling at 25.

In pi­lot­ing the leg­is­la­tion, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie ar­gued that reach­ing the le­gal age of adult­hood at 18 did not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly give some­one an iden­ti­cal le­gal en­ti­tle­ment to every reg­u­lat­ed sub­stance or ac­tiv­i­ty.

He said the Gov­ern­ment was seek­ing to pro­tect peo­ple dur­ing what he de­scribed as the de­vel­op­men­tal stage of “emerg­ing adult­hood,” be­tween 18 and 25, ar­gu­ing that bi­o­log­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment con­tin­ues dur­ing those years and can af­fect judge­ment and de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

Je­re­mie said ear­ly ex­po­sure to al­co­hol, nico­tine, cannabis and gam­bling could in­crease the risk of de­pen­dence, harm­ful pat­terns of use, in­jury and oth­er long-term con­se­quences.

Dur­ing the com­mit­tee stage, the Gov­ern­ment al­so in­tro­duced amend­ments mak­ing the pro­duc­tion of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion manda­to­ry for the pur­chase of al­co­hol and to­bac­co, pos­ses­sion of cannabis and en­try in­to gam­bling es­tab­lish­ments.

Je­re­mie said the ID re­quire­ment would as­sist po­lice in en­forc­ing the new age re­stric­tions by al­low­ing of­fi­cers to es­tab­lish whether some­one found with the reg­u­lat­ed sub­stances was legal­ly per­mit­ted to have them.

Mer­ry said the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of that re­quire­ment would de­pend on whether it was ac­tu­al­ly nec­es­sary.

“If the pre­sen­ta­tion of an ID card is some­thing that is nec­es­sary to achieve the aims of the leg­is­la­tion, and there’s no less in­tru­sive mea­sure that can be passed to achieve those aims, then ob­vi­ous­ly it’s like­ly to be up­held by the courts,” he said.

Mer­ry said the ev­i­dence un­der­pin­ning the high­er age lim­its would al­so be im­por­tant in any chal­lenge.

“If the Gov­ern­ment is in pos­ses­sion of some sort of em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence, which I sup­pose they must have, that drink­ing be­tween the ages of 18 and 21, be­ing ex­posed to gam­bling, smok­ing mar­i­jua­na, that per­sons of that age are more sus­cep­ti­ble to harm be­cause of that ac­tiv­i­ty, then they will be in a good po­si­tion to de­fend the law be­fore the courts,” he said.

Je­re­mie, while wind­ing up de­bate, ac­knowl­edged that the leg­is­la­tion was rad­i­cal but main­tained that it was moral­ly and con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly de­fen­si­ble, chal­leng­ing the Op­po­si­tion to take the mat­ter to court if it dis­agreed.

Mer­ry al­so ex­plained that the fact that the Bill is be­ing passed by a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty is sig­nif­i­cant.

“The dif­fer­ence with pass­ing some­thing, or a piece of leg­is­la­tion, with a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty, is that it’s not the Gov­ern­ment that needs to prove that the law has a le­git­i­mate aim. It is for the cit­i­zen to prove that it does not have a le­git­i­mate aim,” Mer­ry said.

“In oth­er words, it is much more dif­fi­cult to chal­lenge laws that are passed by a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty.”

But with this leg­is­la­tion pro­ceed­ing by sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty, Mer­ry said the Gov­ern­ment would have to jus­ti­fy any in­fringe­ment of con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

“Once the Gov­ern­ment can point to the aim that it’s seek­ing to achieve, in this par­tic­u­lar case, then the courts are like­ly to up­hold that law.”