Chote, Lewis: Not enough evidence to justify new age restrictions

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors Sophia Chote, SC and Fran­cis Lewis are ques­tion­ing whether the Gov­ern­ment has pro­duced enough ev­i­dence to jus­ti­fy re­strict­ing al­co­hol, to­bac­co and cannabis use among adults be­tween 18 and 25, warn­ing that Par­lia­ment should not im­pose sweep­ing age lim­its with­out stronger lo­cal da­ta.

Both sen­a­tors sup­port­ed ef­forts to re­duce sub­stance abuse and pro­tect young peo­ple but raised con­cerns yes­ter­day dur­ing de­bate in the Sen­ate on the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Al­co­hol, Cannabis, Dan­ger­ous Drugs, Gam­bling and To­bac­co) Bill, 2026.

Chote said she wel­comed the in­clu­sion of va­p­ing in the leg­is­la­tion be­cause of its po­ten­tial harm to young peo­ple but was un­con­vinced that the Gov­ern­ment had ad­e­quate­ly ex­plained why 21 was the ap­pro­pri­ate thresh­old.

“Why is 21 years con­sid­ered to be a rea­son­able cut­off pe­ri­od?” she asked.

Chote sim­i­lar­ly ques­tioned why peo­ple be­tween 18 and 21 were be­ing sin­gled out for al­co­hol and to­bac­co re­stric­tions when the health con­se­quences as­so­ci­at­ed with those sub­stances ex­tend across age groups.

“Why are we look­ing at this de­mo­graph­ic?” she asked. “Why is it rea­son­able to say that this par­tic­u­lar de­mo­graph­ic of 18 to 21-year-olds need help or at least pro­tec­tion of the law?”

While Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe pre­sent­ed sta­tis­tics on road fa­tal­i­ties in­volv­ing young peo­ple, Chote said those fig­ures were not com­pared with oth­er age groups, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to de­ter­mine whether young adults pre­sent­ed a unique prob­lem.

“Un­til these ques­tions have been ad­dressed suf­fi­cient­ly and with da­ta in sup­port of such ex­pla­na­tions, I re­al­ly do think that we have not put enough ma­te­r­i­al be­fore this Ho­n­ourable House to al­low or to say that this leg­is­la­tion should be passed,” she said.

Chote al­so raised con­cerns about pro­posed amend­ments to the Chil­dren Act, say­ing a child over ten found smok­ing, drink­ing or pos­sess­ing to­bac­co could po­ten­tial­ly face crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings and a max­i­mum $50,000 fine.

Us­ing the ex­am­ple of a child sent by a grand­moth­er to pur­chase cig­a­rettes, Chote said: “That child can be charged for a crim­i­nal of­fence and can be fined a sum of mon­ey which I’m sure he does not have in his pig­gy bank.”

“I find that ex­treme­ly puni­tive,” she added.

Chote in­stead point­ed to the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion's glob­al SAFER ini­tia­tive for re­duc­ing harm­ful al­co­hol con­sump­tion, ar­gu­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go could ben­e­fit from a broad­er strat­e­gy across age groups.

She sug­gest­ed the leg­is­la­tion be sent to a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee to al­low stake­hold­ers to con­tribute.

“This is some­thing that could re­al­ly ben­e­fit from a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee, and we can deal with al­co­hol abuse across the coun­try,” she said.

Lewis, mean­while, said the de­bate was not about whether al­co­hol, to­bac­co, cannabis and gam­bling cause harm.

“It clear­ly can, and it does,” he said.

Rather, Lewis said Par­lia­ment must de­ter­mine whether the Bill's “par­tic­u­lar age thresh­olds, of­fences and penal­ties, and en­force­ment mech­a­nisms” were sup­port­ed by suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence and were pro­por­tion­ate.

He stressed that those af­fect­ed by the pro­posed re­stric­tions are al­ready adults.

“These are not peo­ple who are ap­proach­ing adult­hood, they are al­ready adults un­der the law,” Lewis said, not­ing that they can vote, mar­ry, have chil­dren, work and be pros­e­cut­ed and im­pris­oned as adults.

He warned that while the leg­is­la­tion had been pre­sent­ed as a pub­lic health mea­sure, “this is al­so a crim­i­nal bill.”

“It is a reg­u­la­to­ry bill. It’s an em­ploy­ment bill for some peo­ple, and it is po­ten­tial­ly a lib­er­ty bill, and there­fore I think Par­lia­ment needs to scru­ti­nise it in that re­gard.”

Lewis par­tic­u­lar­ly ques­tioned the sci­en­tif­ic jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for us­ing 25 as the cannabis thresh­old.

“Why 21, why 25?” he asked.

Lewis said the fre­quent­ly re­peat­ed as­ser­tion that the pre­frontal cor­tex fin­ish­es de­vel­op­ing at 25 was an “over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion”, ar­gu­ing that brain de­vel­op­ment con­tin­ues be­yond that age.

“There is no sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly self-ev­i­dent line at 25,” he said. “My con­cern is that we should not leg­is­late from a slo­gan.”

He al­so called for ev­i­dence spe­cif­ic to this coun­try, ar­gu­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go's drink­ing cul­ture, fam­i­ly struc­tures, en­force­ment ca­pac­i­ty, in­for­mal econ­o­my, Car­ni­val cul­ture and re­la­tion­ship with bars and rum shops dif­fer from those of oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions.

“Where is the Trinidad-To­ba­go ev­i­dence demon­strat­ing that the pro­posed thresh­olds will pro­duce the in­tend­ed out­comes?” Lewis asked.

“These are mea­sur­able ques­tions that de­serve mea­sur­able an­swers.”

Lewis al­so ques­tioned whether less re­stric­tive mea­sures could achieve the same pub­lic health ob­jec­tives and whether the Bill's penal­ties were pro­por­tion­ate.

“The max­i­mum penal­ty is not mean­ing­less sim­ply be­cause we say a judge may ex­er­cise dis­cre­tion,” he said.

Lewis ul­ti­mate­ly de­scribed the leg­is­la­tion as ap­pear­ing “more fun­da­men­tal­ly a puni­tive law than a pro­tec­tive law.”

The Bill was passed af­ter mid­night with full gov­ern­ment back­ing. How­ev­er, there were no votes for the leg­is­la­tion from the Op­po­si­tion or In­de­pen­dent bench­es.