Don't you see how extremely patronizing it is to say, essentially, "you can't make your own decisions, your brain isn't fully developed"? I get that this is occasionally necessary to say to actual kids, but it does not seem appropriate to say to anyone we deem capable enough to vote and drive a car.

Just because someone's capable of voting or driving a car it doesn't mean they're doing a good job at it - it's just that they're now past the bare minimum required to qualify.

Anyway, the biggest problem here's not the brain, since adults get addicted just as well.

The problem's that some truly evil people have created yet another addictive product, spent a lot of money to market it and now the poor sods using it are stuck with the ill health and addiction.

And the rest of us have to pick up the pieces while the miserable bastards which invented this get rich. Oh how I hope they're thrown in a dungeon.

Patronizing or not, it's true. And it's better to admit that amongst ourselves so that we can protect adolescents as they're developing. Otherwise, you might end up with companies taking advantage of this fact and getting teenagers addicted to something pretty much everyone knows is terrible for you now, and those very same teenagers might start defending them, making cases for personal responsibility when they don't even have the proper brain parts to have any

I think the last paragraph referred to people in general and not only to young people.

They even add on the old "I was like you, then I changed, so obviously you too may one day be so fortunate as to advance into being like me"

It's true, shrug. I distinctly remember thinking "Why don't other people make the right decisions?".

I'll admit including it is patronising and in itself immature. Maybe this is my "Why don't people realise that other people are complex beings?" moment and in another dozen years I'll be chiding my past self again!

If people are infinitely more complex and there are ten million other factors in life, then how can the advertising be singled out?