The age of majority varies across the world and within different cultures – it can be anything from the mid teens to the early 20s – the United Nations suggest 18 as a compromise as do the European Union but (contrary to the views of various conspiracy theorists) neither the UN nor EU can actually force a sovereign nation to immediately change its laws.
Having a lower age wasn’t necessarily a good thing as even in liberal European countries it often meant that if you did not attend University you got conscripted into the military whether or not you wanted to – or had to work an extra year for subsistence wages in somewhere like the water board or the PTT (post and telecom authority), often doing boring and unpleasant stuff and being 100km away from your home so you might as well go in the army anyway..
To confuse matters further, the permitted age for taking legal substances and voting can be different from the actual age of majority. In England it was once legal to buy (and sell) cigarettes at age 16 but you were still a minor (this is now changed, you must be 18).
Taking controlled substances is against the law whatever age you are – ironically its the UN who suggest this should be so (the actual reasons why countries pass drug control laws are diverse even if the end result is the same)
at the same time they encourage free speech and discussion of controversial subjects worldwide and a level of protection for young people. It doesn’t immediately make sense that they put so many resources towards drug control when they could use them for better purposes; but in recent times some countries deliberately used various drugs cultures to dominate nations via colonialism (which is why some foreign nations had really harsh penalties against drug use). Added to that, I’ve noticed in Europe its the teenagers themselves who are less tolerant of substance use, not my age group (who did way more drugs anyway) and my parents generation could often get the same drugs legally (like some Americans do today)
