I got there from a point of, "at what point do we consider ourselves adults?" It's kinda fucked that we say, "Yes, a kid fresh out of high school with hardly any actual life skills is perfectly competent to sign contracts, to understand the law and be held liable when they break it, date and possibly get married, enlist in military service, sign for loans, register to vote, and all this other good shit, but they're not old enough to drink alcohol or smoke tobacco." I mean, it's settled science that at 18 years the brain is still developing, and doesn't really stop developing until around 25. So, obviously I feel like that should be where we say adulthood should start.

I mean, if we're not going to change it, then obviously we need to refocus public education in the US. Stop teaching kids to pass the standardized testing that state and federal government use to assign schools funding and focus more on teaching kids how to actually adult. How to make budgets, how to file taxes, how to read and comprehend contracts, etc.