Two major Trinidad and Tobago organizations have thrown their support behind a controversial government legislative push to raise minimum legal age limits for alcohol, tobacco, cannabis and gambling, though one industry group has flagged critical gaps in enforcement planning.
The administration led by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar announced via social media this week that it will table The Miscellaneous Provisions (Alcohol, Cannabis, Dangerous Drugs, Gambling and Tobacco) Bill, 2026 before national parliament imminently. If passed, the legislation will overhaul the country’s age restrictions for regulated goods and activities: lifting the minimum legal age for purchasing, possessing and consuming alcohol and tobacco from 18 to 21, while setting a new 25-year minimum age threshold for cannabis access and all forms of legal gambling.
Road safety non-governmental organization Arrive Alive has fully endorsed the proposed changes, grounding its support in decades of public health research on adolescent development. Sharon Inglefield, president of Arrive Alive, explained that peer-reviewed research consistently confirms that the human brain does not finish full structural and cognitive development until approximately 25 years of age. Early exposure to alcohol, nicotine and other controlled substances, she noted, not only disrupts healthy neural growth but also impairs core cognitive functions including problem-solving, impulse control and decision-making.
Beyond its support for the legislative reform, Inglefield highlighted that the NGO runs a free, evidence-based education program for primary and secondary schools across the country designed to teach young people about the risks of impaired decision-making from alcohol. The program centers on an interactive experience where students wear specialized alcohol-impairment goggles that simulate the disorienting visual and motor effects of intoxication, helping them experience first-hand the dangers of drinking, particularly for inexperienced road users. Inglefield added that underage drinking also ties directly to the country’s persistent road safety crisis of drunk driving, a issue Arrive Alive has prioritized for decades, and called on schools across the nation to book the interactive program for their campuses.
The Bar Owners Association of Trinidad and Tobago (BOATT) has also confirmed it does not oppose the core goal of raising the minimum drinking age to protect younger people from harm, but association president Satesh Moonasar warned that the legislation will fail to meet its intended objectives without complementary policy changes to address enforcement challenges. Moonasar pointed out that current rules do not require Trinidad and Tobago residents to carry official national identification at all times, making it nearly impossible for licensed vendors and law enforcement to reliably verify the age of people purchasing or consuming alcohol.
He raised pointed questions about unregulated informal sales, noting that illegal alcohol vendors operating out of small unlicensed stores are unlikely to enforce age checks even after the law changes. For public consumption of alcohol, which remains legal in Trinidad and Tobago, Moonasar asked how police officers would confirm a person’s age if they are suspected of underage drinking but do not carry ID. Echoing a previous proposal from Homeland Security Minister Roger Alexander to mandate universal carry of national ID, Moonasar argued that the two policies must be implemented together to work effectively. Without mandatory ID, he explained, police would be forced to take all suspected underage drinkers into police stations to contact parents, creating unnecessary logistical and operational burdens that will undermine consistent enforcement of the new age rules. Moonasar emphasized that BOATT’s concerns are not intended to block the reform, but to push the government to address critical gaps before the bill goes into effect, to ensure it actually delivers on its goal of reducing underage access to alcohol and tobacco.