The age of majority in the UK is 18. People who are younger than 18 are minors/children, not adults.

It's not quite so simple. Although the age of majority is 18 according to the Family Law Reform Act 1969, that is primarily relevant to financial contracts (debt), criminal sentencing, and tobacco. Drinking, you can drink in private from sixteen, although you can only purchase once at eighteen. You can start a company at sixteen. You bear primary authority over your medical records from sixteen, and your caregivers cannot access them without your consent. You can vote in some elections from sixteen. But you can't adopt until 21.

The TLDR is that in the UK, age limits are quite case-by-case, and tend to range from 16 to 21, although in more niche cases can range from 11 (the age you can open a bank account) to 30 (the age of suffrage for women in the 1918 Representation of the people act).

Wanted to mention that 16 year olds could buy cigarettes until 2007, went to check the year, found that more interestingly:

You can smoke cigarettes at any age, but you are not allowed to buy them until you are 18.

If you are caught smoking by a uniformed police officer or park keeper in a public place when under 16, he or she can take away your tobacco and cigarette papers.

s.7 Children and Young Persons Act 1933

https://lawstuff.org.uk/at-what-age-can-i/buy-and-consume/

There is zero reason to demand that drinking age is same as joining army age or voting age or owning gun age. It is absurd to demand same age for all these.

No it isn’t. You don’t get to cherry pick the scenarios that someone will be considered an adult for. Either you’re an adult or you aren’t, and “you’re an adult when it’s politically favourable to me” is not an acceptable compromise. I get the impression that you’d be the same type of person to defend the patriot act if it was made about tax evasion instead of terrorism.

> You don’t get to cherry pick the scenarios that someone will be considered an adult for.

But we do get to pick and choose which privileges we extend to minors, and when. A 16 year old has no legal right to consume alcohol, but that only means that we can ban them from doing so, not that we have to.

And in fact, in Germany they have that legal right. Reality is that these lines are not universal.

> You don’t get to cherry pick the scenarios that someone will be considered an adult for.

That is absurd claim. We in fact do get to chery pick scenarios in which someone is mature enough for X and not yet mature enough for Y. That isbjust simple logic, it is irrational to demand that different situations are treated the same.

Patriot act, taxes and terroris have literally zero to do with anything.

> There is zero reason to demand that drinking age is same as joining army age

"Drinks like a soldier" doesn't have the same ring to it.