Two of the bills currently making their way through the 2023 Legislature are about when young people are old enough to do stuff. House Bill 217 would lower the voting age to 16 for local and state elections. Senate Bill 116 would prohibit New Mexicans under the age of 21 from purchasing or possessing automatic or semiautomatic firearms (with lots of exceptions).

Currently the voting age is 18 across the board. 18 is also the age when one can join the military (there is a waiver for 17-year-olds who have finished high school and have parental permission). 18 is the age, for the most part, when you are kicked out of the foster care system. 18-year-olds accused of crimes are treated as adults in the criminal justice system.

To purchase cigarettes, other tobacco products, cannabis, or alcohol, one must be 21. Turning 21 also allows you to gamble in a casino.

The only things 16-year-olds in New Mexico can do currently are drive if they've had a learner's permit for a year and be tried as an adult if the felony they're accused of has enough media attention.

We're all over the place on what is a minor and what is an adult. The more subjective we get, the more inconsistent we become.

There is a lot of fluidity among individuals and their maturity between the ages of 16 and 21, I think everyone can agree. I left for college the week before I turned 17 and started supporting myself at 20. As a whole, I feel I am not a (terribly) warped member of society.

But the government felt at the time of my college graduation that I was too young, even as a commissioned military officer, to buy a bottle of wine.

(Although it is fairly universally accepted that girls mature faster than boys – how many friends do you have with a daughter who is "13 going on 30?" Perhaps we should stagger the age of majority by gender.)

Many, many New Mexicans begin supporting themselves at the age of 18. Some enter the military; others enter the workforce. Still others become law enforcement officers. We trust them to defend our nation, apprentice to skilled trades, or protect our neighborhoods.

But purchase tobacco, cannabis or alcohol? That's a step too far.

So, I don't love SB 116. I understand the point: To prevent disturbed young people from buying high-capacity rifles and going on a rampage. It may prevent purchase but is unlikely to prevent possession. There are so many exceptions listed in the bill regarding possession that that element seems impossible to enforce.

More problematic to me is HB 217. I just don't see a need for high school sophomores to choose our next governor. I am all for voter participation, but I don't see this panning out the way the bill's sponsors and the Secretary of State hope.

First, 16- and 17-year-old voters are more likely to opt out of registering with a party, in keeping with Gen Z trends, so will be Decline To State, or DTS. So if the first election they are old enough for is the primary, they are already left out.

It seems to me, like most of the voting reform package put forward by the Secretary of State, lowering the voting age is a solution in search of a problem.

It seems to me, enforcing possession of certain firearms by "minors" is going to be problematic.

18 seems like a good, round number for nearly everything. Or actually for everything.

Given the decades-long 21-year-old benchmark for alcohol (ranked among the highest in the world generally on par with majority-Muslim nations), and the raising of tobacco sales to that age (us, Kazakhstan, Kuwait and Mongolia), and fixing cannabis from the beginning there, I know it's unlikely that our country would lower the age for our "sin" consumptions.

We are a global outlier, without necessarily better outcomes. We rank similarly to other developed nations for deaths attributed to alcohol and tobacco, despite a higher age for first legal access.

Families, the economy, and society generally recognize the transition from minor to adult around age 18. The government should quit affixing arbitrary ages to certain acts to achieve political aims.

Merritt Hamilton Allen is a PR executive and former Navy officer. She appears regularly as a panelist on NM PBS and is a frequent guest on News Radio KKOB. A Republican, she lives amicably with her Democratic husband north of I-40 where they run two head of dog, and two of cat. She can be reached at news.ind.merritt@gmail.com.