Coming of age
In the United States, teenagers are allowed to drive at 16 in all states except New Jersey, which requires drivers to be 17 and older, and sometimes receive the responsibility of owning their own car. Teenagers may drive at age 15 in Idaho and Montana. At 16, teenagers are also old enough to donate blood and work in most establishments. At 18 one is legally considered an adult and can vote and join the military. The legal age for purchasing and consuming alcohol and recreational marijuana, the latter of which is only legal in the District of Columbia, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Alaska, is 21. The legal age for purchasing and consuming tobacco products is 18 in most states; 19 in Alabama, Alaska and Utah; and 21 in California, New Jersey, Oregon, Hawaii and Maine. Multiple localities have also raised the minimum purchase age independent of state laws.
Timeline of young people's rights in the United States
In the 1980s the United States provided global leadership by acting as the "Tip of The Spear" among nations in crafting the Convention on the Rights of the Child, or CRC. After the United Nations adopted the CRC in 1989, the United States became a signatory nation in 1994. However, to date the country has refused to ratify the Convention, joining only one other nation in the world with that status. Among the reasons the United States has failed to ratify the Convention is the fact that the Convention clearly states that anyone under the age of 18 is a child. The U.S. government has reservations about how that would affect matters when a 16- or 17-year-old commits a crime; currently, in certain instances, such a person can be tried as an adult in the U.S. courts. Several politicians have said that many of the declarations included in the document are not issues for which the federal government is in charge. There is currently no apparent effort within the federal government to adopt the CRC.