IDs MUST BE SHOWN

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards will have to be pro­duced to buy al­co­hol and to­bac­co, pos­sess cannabis and en­ter gam­bling es­tab­lish­ments un­der amend­ments the Gov­ern­ment plans to add to its sweep­ing leg­is­la­tion rais­ing the le­gal ages for those ac­tiv­i­ties.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie an­nounced the new re­quire­ment while pi­lot­ing the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Al­co­hol, Cannabis, Dan­ger­ous Drugs, Gam­bling and To­bac­co) Bill, 2026, in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day.

Je­re­mie dis­closed the pro­posed changes just be­fore tak­ing Par­lia­ment through the bill clause by clause.

“There are some amend­ments com­ing. I am mov­ing an amend­ment to in­clude va­p­ing and I am al­so mov­ing an amend­ment to re­quire the use of IDs, in re­spect of the pur­chase of to­bac­co, in re­spect of pos­ses­sion of cannabis, in re­spect of en­try in­to gam­bling es­tab­lish­ments and in re­spect to the pur­chase of al­co­hol,” Je­re­mie said.

Up to press time, how­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the pro­posed amend­ments had not been cir­cu­lat­ed to Op­po­si­tion mem­bers of the House.

Guardian Me­dia asked Je­re­mie whether the amend­ment would make iden­ti­fi­ca­tion manda­to­ry as part of those trans­ac­tions and ac­tiv­i­ties re­gard­less of a per­son’s age, mean­ing, for ex­am­ple, that any­one pur­chas­ing al­co­hol or to­bac­co would have to pro­duce an ID, rather than on­ly some­one whose age was in doubt.

Je­re­mie replied dur­ing the de­bate and said the Bill is still be­ing in­ter­ro­gat­ed in Par­lia­ment and the ques­tions would be an­swered dur­ing the de­bate.

Un­der cur­rent law, the bur­den and le­gal oblig­a­tion rest on the ven­dor.

The amend­ment comes amidst a much broad­er manda­to­ry iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­pos­al be­ing con­sid­ered by the Gov­ern­ment.

In Au­gust, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der con­firmed that a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee was ex­am­in­ing a pro­pos­al to re­quire cit­i­zens aged 16 and over to pos­sess valid iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in pub­lic.

Alexan­der said then that the pro­pos­al had not be­come law and in­vit­ed pub­lic feed­back. He al­so linked the idea to en­force­ment of the Gov­ern­ment’s plans to in­crease the per­mis­si­ble ages for al­co­hol, cannabis and gam­bling.

Yes­ter­day, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al spent much of his pre­sen­ta­tion de­fend­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to im­pose dif­fer­ent age lim­its even though the le­gal age of adult­hood re­mains 18.

“The ques­tion, there­fore, is not whether an 18-year-old is an adult,” Je­re­mie said. “The ques­tion is whether reach­ing adult­hood, the age of ma­jor­i­ty, by de­f­i­n­i­tion con­fers an au­to­mat­ic, iden­ti­cal, le­gal en­ti­tle­ment to every sub­stance and every ac­tiv­i­ty that so­ci­ety reg­u­lates.”

Je­re­mie said the pol­i­cy was not con­fined to pro­tect­ing chil­dren and ado­les­cents but ex­tend­ed to what he de­scribed as the de­vel­op­men­tal stage of “emerg­ing adult­hood,” span­ning ages 18 to 25.

He said bi­o­log­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment con­tin­ues dur­ing that pe­ri­od and can in­flu­ence judge­ment, de­ci­sion-mak­ing and long-term well-be­ing.

Je­re­mie ar­gued that ear­ly ex­po­sure to al­co­hol, nico­tine, cannabis and gam­bling could in­crease the like­li­hood of de­pen­dence, harm­ful pat­terns of use, in­jury and oth­er last­ing con­se­quences.

Cit­ing Unit­ed Na­tions Pop­u­la­tion Fund pro­jec­tions for 2025, he said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 285,000 peo­ple, or 19 per cent of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s es­ti­mat­ed 1.5 mil­lion pop­u­la­tion, were be­tween ten and 24.

“We can­not, on this side, sit idly by while near­ly one-fifth of our na­tion’s hu­man cap­i­tal is com­pro­mised,” he said.

Je­re­mie al­so re­lied on com­par­isons with oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions to ar­gue that gov­ern­ments al­ready im­pose re­stric­tions on reg­u­lat­ed prod­ucts be­yond the gen­er­al age of ma­jor­i­ty.

For al­co­hol, he cit­ed the Unit­ed States, where the min­i­mum le­gal drink­ing age is 21, telling Par­lia­ment that re­search showed a re­duc­tion in mo­tor ve­hi­cle crash­es af­ter the high­er thresh­old was adopt­ed.

He al­so point­ed to Lithua­nia, which raised its min­i­mum pur­chas­ing age for al­co­hol from 18 to 20, and Sri Lan­ka, where the le­gal pur­chase age for al­co­hol and nico­tine is 21.

On to­bac­co, Je­re­mie cit­ed Sin­ga­pore, which pro­gres­sive­ly in­creased its min­i­mum le­gal age to 21, and the Unit­ed States, which raised its fed­er­al min­i­mum sales age for to­bac­co and nico­tine prod­ucts from 18 to 21 in 2019.

Je­re­mie not­ed that US re­tail­ers are re­quired to use pho­to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to ver­i­fy the age of any­one un­der 30 at­tempt­ing to pur­chase cov­ered to­bac­co prod­ucts.

For cannabis, Je­re­mie re­lied in part on the Cari­com Re­gion­al Com­mis­sion on Mar­i­jua­na, not­ing that re­gion­al lead­ers had been ad­vised that cannabis use be­fore age 24 was not rec­om­mend­ed be­cause of po­ten­tial ef­fects on mem­o­ry, learn­ing and at­ten­tion.

“The House would note that in the leg­is­la­tion that we have put be­fore the House to­day, we have rough­ly fol­lowed the Cari­com age mod­el,” he said.

The Bill would make 25 the thresh­old for pos­sess­ing cannabis with­in per­mis­si­ble quan­ti­ties and cul­ti­vat­ing up to four plants.

On gam­bling, Je­re­mie cit­ed Geor­gia, where the age of ma­jor­i­ty is 18 but cit­i­zens un­der 25 are pro­hib­it­ed from en­ter­ing gam­bling es­tab­lish­ments to gam­ble or par­tic­i­pat­ing in elec­tron­i­cal­ly or­gan­ised gam­bling.

The Bill al­so goes be­yond chang­ing age lim­its, propos­ing sub­stan­tial­ly high­er penal­ties for nu­mer­ous of­fences in­volv­ing al­co­hol, to­bac­co, cannabis and gam­bling and in­tro­duc­ing fixed-penal­ty no­tices for sev­er­al breach­es.

It would ex­tend crim­i­nal li­a­bil­i­ty to peo­ple be­tween 18 and 20 for the use or pos­ses­sion of al­co­hol or to­bac­co and to those be­tween 18 and 24 for the use or pos­ses­sion of cannabis or dan­ger­ous drugs.

Je­re­mie said the Gov­ern­ment had con­sid­ered the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the pro­posed mea­sures and con­clud­ed they were “nec­es­sary,” “pro­por­tion­ate” and pur­sued le­git­i­mate aims.

He ac­knowl­edged that drink­ing al­co­hol, smok­ing to­bac­co and gam­bling re­spon­si­bly were le­git­i­mate choic­es but said in­di­vid­ual free­doms must be bal­anced with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“These are le­git­i­mate choic­es, yet those choic­es must nev­er jeop­ar­dise the well-be­ing of our young peo­ple or com­pro­mise pub­lic safe­ty,” he said.

Je­re­mie said the claus­es col­lec­tive­ly sought to safe­guard mi­nors and young adults, strength­en pub­lic health pro­tec­tions and en­sure penal­ties were com­men­su­rate with the grav­i­ty of of­fences.

“The Bill there­fore is not mere­ly a leg­isla­tive ad­just­ment,” Je­re­mie said.

“It is a de­c­la­ra­tion of prin­ci­ple that Trinidad and To­ba­go will act de­ci­sive­ly to pro­tect its young peo­ple, to strength­en its com­mu­ni­ties and to up­hold the val­ues of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and care that bind us to­geth­er as a peo­ple.”