Age-limit Bill passes 15-12; Govt gets no outside support

AKASH SAMA­ROO

Lead Ed­i­tor – Pol­i­tics

The Sen­ate has passed leg­is­la­tion rais­ing the le­gal age for drink­ing al­co­hol and smok­ing to­bac­co in Trinidad and To­ba­go to 21, and for gam­bling and cannabis use to 25, but the Gov­ern­ment failed to at­tract a sin­gle “yes” vote from ei­ther the Op­po­si­tion or In­de­pen­dent bench­es.

The Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Al­co­hol, Cannabis, Dan­ger­ous Drugs, Gam­bling and To­bac­co) Bill, 2026, was ap­proved ear­ly Wednes­day morn­ing, with 15 Sen­a­tors vot­ing in favour, 12 against and three ab­stain­ing.

All 15 votes in favour came from Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tors.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors Dr Mar­lene Attzs, Fran­cis Lewis and Ali­cia Pauline Lalite-Et­ti­enne ab­stained, while the re­main­ing In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors joined the Op­po­si­tion in vot­ing against the leg­is­la­tion.

It is the third ma­jor piece of leg­is­la­tion in re­cent weeks for which the Gov­ern­ment has had to re­ly on the full strength of its Sen­ate bench af­ter fail­ing to se­cure a “yes” vote from ei­ther the Op­po­si­tion or In­de­pen­dents.

Both the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill and the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Bill re­sult­ed in 15-15 ties and re­quired Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark to ex­er­cise his cast­ing vote for them to pass.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie had made a di­rect ap­peal to the In­de­pen­dent bench­es dur­ing his wind-up, urg­ing Sen­a­tors to sup­port the ob­jec­tive of the leg­is­la­tion even if they did not con­sid­er it per­fect.

In mak­ing his case, Je­re­mie re­called the late In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dana See­ta­hal SC and her ap­proach when Par­lia­ment de­bat­ed to­bac­co-con­trol leg­is­la­tion years ago.

He said See­ta­hal was a heavy smok­er but nev­er­the­less sup­port­ed re­stric­tions on to­bac­co be­cause she be­lieved in the ob­jec­tive of the leg­is­la­tion.

“This is a chim­ney smok­er telling me that, okay, this is a good piece of leg­is­la­tion, I sup­port the ob­jec­tive, it’s not go­ing to make my life eas­i­er, but I would sup­port it,” Je­re­mie said.

He then ap­pealed to Sen­a­tors con­sid­er­ing the cur­rent Bill.

“I want to urge my col­leagues on the oth­er side of the aisle to con­sid­er the fact that, one, no piece of leg­is­la­tion is per­fect.”

His ap­peal fol­lowed sev­er­al hours of de­bate in which In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors ques­tioned both the Gov­ern­ment’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the new age lim­its and some of the penal­ties con­tained in the leg­is­la­tion.

Among the is­sues raised was why an 18-year-old, who is legal­ly an adult and can vote, mar­ry, en­ter con­tracts and join the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, should no longer be con­sid­ered old enough to legal­ly pur­chase al­co­hol.

Sen­a­tors al­so chal­lenged the Gov­ern­ment’s re­liance on in­ter­na­tion­al stud­ies and called for lo­cal da­ta to demon­strate the ex­tent to which young peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly af­fect­ed by is­sues such as road deaths, al­co­hol-re­lat­ed harm and drug over­dos­es.

Je­re­mie main­tained that the age lim­its were reg­u­la­to­ry mea­sures and said the de­ci­sion to in­crease the drink­ing age was sup­port­ed by med­ical ev­i­dence.

“The le­gal age to drink al­co­hol in a num­ber of ter­ri­to­ries through­out the world has been lift­ed to 21 on the back of med­ical ev­i­dence,” he said.

Je­re­mie point­ed to ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed ear­li­er in the de­bate by Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe and said the Gov­ern­ment al­so in­tend­ed to use pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and me­dia cam­paigns to re­duce the ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and use of al­co­hol.

He al­so cit­ed ju­ris­dic­tions in­clud­ing the Unit­ed States, Cana­da, Sri Lan­ka, Lithua­nia and Sin­ga­pore, where leg­is­la­tors have im­posed var­i­ous re­stric­tions on al­co­hol, to­bac­co, gam­bling or cannabis.

On con­cerns that some of the Bill’s penal­ties were ex­ces­sive, Je­re­mie ar­gued that Par­lia­ment had pre­vi­ous­ly ap­proved sub­stan­tial in­creas­es in fines and prison sen­tences.

He point­ed to a 2020 amend­ment to the In­ter­pre­ta­tion Act which, he said, in­creased the fine for breach­es of reg­u­la­tions from $500 to $100,000.

Je­re­mie al­so cit­ed penal­ties un­der the Dan­ger­ous Drugs Act rang­ing from 25 years to life im­pris­on­ment, ar­gu­ing that it was dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile those penal­ties with crit­i­cism of a $50,000 fine in the cur­rent Bill.

“The ob­ject of the penal­ty is to ex­press so­ci­ety’s re­pug­nance with the con­duct,” Je­re­mie said.

“I think that the penal­ties which are in the leg­is­la­tion be­fore us, those are re­spon­si­ble penal­ties, and they are pro­por­tion­ate.”

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al al­so re­ject­ed crit­i­cism of the qual­i­ty of the Bill’s draft­ing, say­ing leg­is­la­tion goes through pol­i­cy for­mu­la­tion, a leg­isla­tive re­view com­mit­tee and Cab­i­net over­sight be­fore reach­ing Par­lia­ment.

The Bill will now be sent to Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo for as­sent, af­ter which it will be­come law.