Can I See Some ID, Grandpa?

Tennessee has come up with a strategy to keep underage kids from buying beer: card everybody.

Comer Wilson hasn't had to show his ID to buy beer in a while. Maybe it's the 66-year-old man's long white beard.

Starting Sunday, gray hair won't be good enough. Wilson and everyone else will be required to show identification before buying beer in Tennessee stores - no matter how old the buyer appears.

How did 63-year-old Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen react to the new law?:

"I'll be very pleased when I'm carded, and in my mind I'll just imagine it's because I look so young," he said.

In my mind, I'll just imagine I live in a country where self-delusion isn't needed to make sense of the laws.

More about underage drinking from reason here .

Comments

[jimmy smith]

I am 70 years old, snow white hair and all the accompanying wrinkles of a guy my age. I was recently carded here in Minnesota while buying a box of .22 cal bullets. 2 tours in VN and I never got carded carrying my rifle with lots of live ammo, not once. I joked with the cashier, she said it's their policy to card everyone. I absent-mindedly asked her if there was a place a youngster like me could get a beer ? Luckily the store wasn't busy, otherwise the line would start to lengthen. Sometimes the stupidity can't be perceived. Sure glad it wasn't run by the government.

[crimethink]

While the state law only says you have to card below 30 for alky and 26 for tobaccy, lot of stores around here (Rochester, NY) card everybody voluntarily. From the POV of the store owners, it's hard to trust your tobacco/liquor license to a minimum-wage-making 16-year-old's ability to judge ages.

Add that to the fact that the local cops like to send in balding, wrinkled 20-year-olds on their alcohol stings.

[Single Issue Voter]

Why doesn't the State require all stores to make a scan of the identification of anyone purchasing
alcohol or tobacco? Not only could the data protect the store from underage sale charges but it could prove invaluable to law enforcement in tracking diversion to minors and tax evasion.
The database could be sold to insurance companies and those providing background checks to employers and thus produce a new revenue stream.

State legislatures and the US Congress are shirking their duty.... Go pass the laws NOW!
It would be best to do so at the Federal level
demanding States comply or lose their Highway funds.

Think how valuable it would be for "society" to know who is buying alcohol and tobacco, when, and how much .This law could benefit everyone , especially The Children!

[yeah but]

Change the word beer to pot.
Anybody mind showing id now
Because if drugs are ever legalized this is how it will work

[B]

On a layover in Chicago about a year ago, I saw an airport bartender card a (obviously) 65-year-old Irishman, explaining that it was state law in Illinois to card everyone. I have no idea if that is true or not, but she *was* carding EVERYONE.

[crimethink]

SIV,

Heh, I know you're kidding, but NYS drivers licenses have those pixelated rectangles on the back, which our state lottery machines could scan and tell us the correct name and age of the person. It would also presumably detect fake licenses. Since we usually scanned NYS licenses just to be safe, I wonder if the state was collecting their data all along.

[Single Issue Voter]

Kidding? No I'm trying to enter the lucrative field of public policy! (or Public Health)

I'm suprised they aren't doing this already.
The equipment is relatively cheap and the data would be easy to manage.I figured a digital scan of the id would be the way to go but existing barcode scanners could be used if the States got on board.

[M]

The US is becoming a world-leader in advanced cardiology.

[Joshua Holmes]

I don't get it. Underage kids get their 21 year-old friends, or a local grifter who gets a cut, to go into the stores and buy the booze. This won't do a thing.

[standard libertarian arguments to abolish drinking age for moral and consequentialist reasons]

[Underemployed SWAT Team]

I don't get it. Underage kids get their 21 year-old friends, or a local grifter who gets a cut, to go into the stores and buy the booze. This won't do a thing.

Yes it will.

[Karen]

Well, at least I no longer have to leave big tips to the waiters who ask for my ID when I order a drink.

[Isaac Bartram]

I will reach the big Six-O in October. I was first carded at the local Circle K store about five or six years ago. I laughed my ass off at the time, as the pimple-faced clerk explained that someone in the chain had been busted for selling to minors recently and they now had to card everyone

The next was in Walmart where I was told I needed to give my date of birth to get the purchase approved. Then I got asked for ID in Winn-Dixie last weekend. What's the world coming to?

Frankly I'm getting sick and tired of this shit. If they can't tell that I'm fucking old enough to buy booze I don't know what to say.

Maybe I need to start homebrewing.

[Isaac Bartram]

Well, at least I no longer have to leave big tips to the waiters who ask for my ID when I order a drink.

Karen,

My thirty-plus year old daughter used to be flattered by the "can I see your ID?" stuff. But even she is starting to tire of it.

[Jonathan Hohensee]

Down here in Orlando (and maybe the rest of the state) I am not allowed to buy beer if my 18-year-old roommate (who rearly drinks) comes into the store with me, as apparently it is the law to card everyone in a party of someone buying alochol. Usually he has to either wait in the car or wait a couple of seconds before coming into the store.

[M]

Like this?

[Cesar]

Hell, I'm 24 and every time I go to the liquor store the clerk always makes a crack about how i look 15. I expect to get carded until I'm well into my 30s.

[Jonathan Hohensee]

Like this?
Usually, or inside of the car with the windows open a crack.

[Jonathan Hohensee]

One thing I like about Reason is that a lot of times they take problems that not a lot of people pay attention too (or have much reason to pay attention to) and show why it needs to change.

[crimethink]

Mr Hohensee,

That is the law here in NYS too. It's relatively easy to circumvent at a giant supermarket, since it's hard to tell who comes in together, so long as you don't go in the same checkout line. Unfortunately at the convenience store that I worked at, it was easy Trust me, that was not a fun 30 minutes of arguing to see who was in the same car, and we were actually supposed to card anyone who was waiting in the car if someone from that car was purchasing alcohol. Seriously.

This led to a very fun incident where some sort of tour bus stopped at our place just before midnight, and thirty or so people poured in, half of whom were obviously underage, and the other half wanting to buy alcohol. I had to refuse, because they had arrived in the same vehicle. I had to spend 30 minutes explaining over and over again that, "I know it makes no sense, but that's the law in New York State." One guy even claimed to be a (badgeless) Maryland State Trooper and said he was going to get in touch with his buds in NYS and get me in trouble for something. I offered to call the police and have them come over and explain the relevant laws to us, but he declined.

Working in a convenience store is a shit job, but at least you get some stories.

[crimethink]

That should read...

Unfortunately at the convenience store that I worked at, it was easy Trust me, that was not a fun 30 minutes of arguing to see who was in the same car,

Whoa, not sure how that happened.

[DustinR]

Im 22 and I get carded for cigarettes more than alcohol.

[Tom]

Wal-Marts around here (and I assume everywhere) are now scanning the magentic strips off the back of our drivers licenses. What pisses me off is there now exists a data base that details all my beer and snuff purchases. Wal-Mart already was treating everyone like a minor by allowing tobacco sales at only one counter, and at one store here they always park the fattest ass cashier there, who sits on a stool and makes a big production out of having to get up and pull your selection.
Some stores even have the baby formula only available at the tobacco aisle. Weird message being sent there.

[Dave B.]

So now clerks have to check IDs of everyone buying alcohol... to make sure that they check the IDs of everyone under 30... which they do to make sure they catch everyone who's under 21. Is the next step going to be carding everyone regardless of their purchase to make sure no one over 30 is left uncarded?

[M]

babying formula only available at the tobacco aisle

convenience store : convenience :: people's republic : republic

[Andrew]

I'm 30 and still get carded about 75% of the time.

The funny thing about that is that when I would be out to dinner with my brother (who just turned 21) since he turned 18, he could order alcohol all the time without getting carded, while I'd get carded.

While a drinking age of 21 is interminably silly, I can't be too upset over this. Silly, but there are worse things out there that are subject to much greater governmental abuse than this.

[Sam Walton]

Tom,

Around where? I bought a 12 of PBR at a Vicksburg MS WalMart last week and they certainly didn't scan my id. I've been carded at Walmarts across the South but I've never seen them scan it. Perhaps my DL doesn't have what they are looking for? Not sure about my home state as the closest WallyWorld doesn't sell beer.I often buy smokes at their Murphy USA gas stations but never inside the store as the price is %25 more

[Foxhunter]

In Alaska, it was the same way where state law required everyone to be IDed for everything. It totally blew. I mean, ok I'm 22 and look about 16 so I'm used to being carded, but you're carding everyone and making the lines suck balls. Oh, and I found it to be ironic that I was outside a liquor store and some 40 year old guy comes up to me and says that he doesn't have his ID on him and can I buy him some beer. No where in the world should this happen no matter how funny it was to me.

Oh, and I tip big when servers don't ID me for my convenience. They are taking a risk for me and it's worth a big tip.

[mtc]

On the other hand crimethink, having served a 4.6666 year sentence at RIT (engineering is usually five!), I could name you plenty of places in Rochester that choose not to card you at all 😉 .

What gets me is getting carded to buy products to help me quit smoking. I'm on the nicotine lozenges (which work insofar as they're better than smoking, though I haven't quit the lozenges yet..), and its like Christ, if I'm a 17 year old kid trying to quit smoking, well fucking let me have it. You can't get a buzz off the god damn things (they're addictive but the delivery is too slow to hook you), and it basically has the net effect of making trying to quit smoking more embarassing (because no one likes a quiter) than just keeping the god damn habit. ugh.

At least I look old enough now that IDing me for booze is more of a formality than a show-me-some-id-before-i-call-the-cops-you-fucking-punk ordeal. It is a bit ironic that buying the product with the lower age requirement usually results in being treated like more of a douche.

RB-Style Full Disclosure: I'm smoking and drinking as I type this post, but it is (sort of) 4th of July weekend, so with proper regard to what America should mean, surely it doesn't count.

[Brandybuck]

"Maybe I need to start homebrewing."

We're going to need to see some ID for those hops...

[Doctor Gonzalesz]

Wow. I can't believe the level of grief exhibited here. I completely agree that this information shouldn't be recorded anywhere. But if you are sooooooo put out by providing an ID, how devastated are you going to be when drugs are legalized for those of us 21 and older? Reach your decrepit hand into your worn-out ass pocket and show your ID. Or would you prefer we just scan your retina and check it against our database?

[Lowdog]

I work at a liquor store, and I card most everyone. Mostly, it's because I don't want to get the owner fined or have him be pissed at me, because as a libertarian, I hardly care. It's especially annoying because they (the state) are expecting someone like myself, making only ~$8 an hour, to be an expert at detecting false identification, and not only AZ ID cards and licenses, but also every state license and passports (we don't even accept out-of-state ID-only cards).

What also irks me considerably is that these sorts of laws and regulations really only hurt small businesses. Big corporations like Circle K can easily afford the fines, for one.

[emmy]

This is insane! Thankfully I don't live in the States, I find it disturbing that your purchases can be recorded.

I would be offended if somebody demanded id despite knowing I am over the legal age.
It is a wonderful complement when someone innocently asks if you are over eighteen when you are buying cigarettes or alcohol.
Most people have enough intelligence to judge for themselves by your response.

I am only 26 but feel uncomfortable with the idea of strangers knowing my age, let alone my name and address which would be on the card!

It is a horrific invasion of privacy. Whatever happened to the right to keep to yourself?
It reminds me of the id papers that were mandatory in Nazi Germany. People were not allowed to leave their homes without them.

Sadly it is happening again, slowly we are creeping back to totalitarianism.

Americans are allowing their rights to be surrendered under the guise of security. Your government wants you to be afraid so that they can take away your rights.
They are trying to do this in Europe too.
We are all doomed.

[LarryA]

Uh, this was the 6/27 Brickbat.

Down here in Orlando (and maybe the rest of the state) I am not allowed to buy beer if my 18-year-old roommate (who rearly drinks) comes into the store with me, as apparently it is the law to card everyone in a party of someone buying alochol.

Goes right along with the laws prohibiting drinking or smoking with children in the car.

[crimethink]

Lowdog,

The fines aren't the only thing...if you have repeated selling-to-minors violations, the state takes away your liquor license. This actually happened to a major grocery store chain here in Rochester. Though they got the license back after 90 days, I believe.

[crimethink]

emmy,

I think the govt recording everyone's purchases thing was a joke. Though, those of us who use a "Special Savings Card" or "Shoppers Club" at our local supermarket are indeed having our purchases recorded by that company, but that's a voluntary thing, you can buy stuff there without using the card.

[LarryA]

Just to set priorities straight, Texas now has a law prohibiting foster parents from smoking in the foster home.

Our Health and Human Services department also published a regulation that prohibited foster parents from keeping a firearm or ammo in a foster home. However the Eightieth Texas Legislature (2007) just passed a law, SB 322, by Bob Deuell, that says lawful possession of firearms and ammunition may not be prohibited in foster homes. Minimum safe storage requirements to be adopted.

Since the bill received more than a two-thirds majority in each house, it's effective immediately.

[RED]

The TN. law is only pertaining to beer. What if you are 20, look 35, and want to buy wine or liquor? Idiot Americans, always coming up with such outstanding new ways of screwing yourselves in the name of "freedom" and "the children". Intelligent, wicked, but determined, children will simply work around it. Just like they do in regards to the idiotic , socalled , warondrugs.

[SixSigma]

Though I don't know if it's a law - I and my employee were both carded as I attempted to by beer. I explained, there's no need to care the 16 year old as he's my employee and I'm simply taking him home. They said tough.

I asked, "So, if I bring in my 3 year old (at the time anyway) daughter, you'd attempt to card her?"

I recieved no answer, left, went to the grocery store in the next plaza over, through a line with the same 16 year old, and bought the beer.

How do these laws distinguish betweeen passengers and family?

[SixSigma]

EDIT:

I attempted to buy...there's no need to card...

[Down with Sathington Willoughb]

Sathington Willoughby
The legislator that
Penned us up a bill
That banned the use
Of certain things
like this and that
this and that
this and that

[The Wine Commonsewer?]

I got carded last week in Tucson Arizona. I thought she was kidding. She was serious and told me the fines are personal and severe and she cards everybody.

On another note, the city I used to call home set up a card sting a few years ago using a policed cadet who looked 25 but was a couple of weeks shy of her 21st birthday. Every single grocery store, 7-11, Circle K, Ma & Pa, and supermarket in the city sold the alcohol without asking for id.

That's just wrong. Not the selling but the obvious entrapment. Like Safeway or Albertsons is going to knowingly sell beer to an underage kid just to make an extra 25 cents on the bottom line.

[The Wine Commonsewer?]

When I lived in Memphis Tennessee it was oppressively hot and humid all summer, the drinking age was 18, I was 20 and needed cold beer on a regular basis so it worked nicely.

[crimethink]

TWC,

You're definitely supposed to card for alky unless they look over 30. And, it wouldn't be entrapment anyway.

[Bobster]

I don't work at a store that demands workers card everyone. If I did, I would read the name, address, date of birth, and SSN out loud off the card. It would alarm the customers and hopefully alert them to the fact that they are handing a total stranger a ton of private information. Maybe total public outrage would put an end to the stupidity?

(I'm in Ohio where the SSN is on the drivers license by default. You can tell them not to enter it but if you don't it will be there.)

[Cracker\'s Boy]

"And, it wouldn't be entrapment anyway."

I'm curious why it's not? I know that this sort of "sting" has been done many times, and I suppose the old farts at the SCOTUS have ruled it not entrapment, but why isn't it?

And on a similar note... why isn't the under-21 year old police cadet not charged with a crime either? Or her superiors, for contributing to the delinquency of a minor?

CB

[Bobster]

Cracker's Boy
Good point. I always thought it was the underage buyer who breaking the law.

[crimethink]

Entrapment occurs when a person who had no desire or intent to commit a crime is coerced or psychologically manipulated by law enforcement into doing so.

Merely offering the opportunity to commit a crime is not entrapment. Now, the distinction can get pretty blurry at times -- if the clerk asked for ID, and the buyer argued about it, threatened to call their boss and get them fired, etc, you might have a case for entrapment. But if all the person doing the sting did was walk up to the counter with alcohol and pay for it, there's no way that could be considered entrapment.

[Cracker\'s Boy]

So presenting a 20 year old who looks 25 is somehow "not psychologically manipulat(ing)" someone. Another reason I'll never be able to serve on a jury... nor be tried by a jury of "my peers".

And back to the question of "contributing to the delinquency of a minor". Any thoughts, crimethink?

CB

[LarryA]

On another note, the city I used to call home set up a card sting a few years ago using a police cadet who looked 25 but was a couple of weeks shy of her 21st birthday.

Old enough to enforce a law she's too young to comply with. Wow.

And on a similar note... why isn't the under-21 year old police cadet not charged with a crime either? Or her superiors, for contributing to the delinquency of a minor?

The police are above the law. They are authorized to commit crimes in order to catch people who are committing the same crimes in an unauthorized manner. This is a particularly important police power when prosecuting crimes where no one's rights are violated so there's no victim to complain.

Good point. I always thought it was the underage buyer who breaking the law.

Two laws. The underage buyer (not working with law enforcement) can be charged with minor in possession after making the purchase. The law being enforced here is providing to a minor, which often carries a heavier penalty than possession.

[The Wine Commonsewer?]

Crime, of course it's entrapment, the police chose a nice looking girl who was two weeks from legal and looked completely legal to buy alcohol and the sole intent was to get the clerk to sell booze to a minor. And every store did so. Including the major corporate players with much to lose and nothing to gain.

This was several years ago before the you must card everyone who looks under 25 rule.

And, btw, is that the law now? If you look under 25 (30?) you must be carded?

[The Wine Commonsewer?]

I was just trying to google up the story but it must be too old to be archived. Prolly find it on Nexxis. Anyway, I noticed the police did the same thing again recently. Everybody must have learned their lesson because only one place sold booze to the minor police decoy, a dairy of all places.

[The Wine Commonsewer?]

Crime, maybe you mean that under the legal definition of entrapment that this doesn't cut the mustard. That would be different than the reality of life where it is unquestionably entrapment.

[Shirt]

For the past 15 years, I've been driving around on a CA license that "expired" in 1992. But according to CA law, it's valid as long as I'm on active duty in the military. I've been debating getting a FL license just to avoid the inevitable questioning about my current license's validity, but the CA one has no bar codes and uses a number that's not my SSN. I think I'll keep it a while.

[crimethink]

In most states there are exceptions written into these types of laws for police officers and their agents involved in a sting operation. That's how cops are able to buy and sell drugs in drug busts. Presumably, once the purchase is made, the buyer has to immediately turn the item over to the police.

TWC,

Entrapment is almost exclusively a legal term -- I've never heard it used outside of a legal context. Maybe that's just me.

In any case, being confronted by an attractive girl doesn't come anywhere near the level of manipulation required for entrapment. Also, I'm not sure how different 20 and 25 year olds look; there are a lot of people of both ages who could pass for the other.

[crimethink]

TWC,

Do you think that if a store sold alcohol to a 20-year-old who wasn't working with the police, they could use the fact that she was hotttttt as a defense in court?

[The Wine Commonsewer?]

...they could use the fact that she was hotttttt as a defense in court?

You goof, that's not what I meant. 🙂

I didn't say she was a hottie I said she was attractive. I should have been clearer and said she was conservatively dressed and didn't look like a sketcher, drug addict, hooker, or sleaze bag biker chick.

They dressed her up in grown up clothes so that she would look like a responsible adult business woman with the deliberate intention of making the clerks believe it was okay to sell beer to her so that they could say AH HA!

I suspected you were referring to the legal definition of entrapment and you're right, this doesn't quite fly. It's still entrapment in my book and I believe the term sting applies equally well. In fact, that term was used in the headline. The term STING makes me think of the movie of the same name and the elaborate scam that Newman et al used to deprive the marks of their hard earned cash.

And it certainly isn't much of a stretch to see a STING as entrapment. At least not for us civilians.

Any way you slice it and any terms you apply as descriptors don't change the inherent nature of the activity.

Parts is Parts.

[M, always trying to understand]

Parts is Parts.

Thank goodness for Google.

[davek]

Reach your decrepit hand into your worn-out ass pocket and show your ID. Or would you prefer we just scan your retina and check it against our database?

Are these supposed to be the only options?

[AC]

Lowdog,

What liquor store do you work at? $8/hr is pretty lame, but some of the stores around here (such as Top's) are magical, magical places.

[Kern Butler]

LEARN TO RECOGINSE THE DEVIL AND
YOU WILL LIVE TO SEE YOUR SAVIOR.

[????? ??????]

Thanks