This articles details the possibility of Tennessee becoming the first state to require proof of age for all alcohol sales, even if you’re 80- supposedly to curb underage drinking. I’m of the opinion that this will not curb underage drinking, because the number of underage people buying alochol now without having to show ID is negligible- what reputable business is not carding minors these days? Most underage drinking is done at keg parties, or via older people buying the alcohol- this new law will have no effect on that. What it will effect, though, is homeless people without ID will now be pretty much unable to buy alcohol, as I would wager most don’t have drivers licenses and their friends probably don’t either.
So, is this wrong, or a good thing? I’m not sure and wonder what others think.
Taking alcohol from the homeless is a bad thing? And it’s not even taking it away from them, really. A homeless person who wants an ID card can get one for the cost of a bottle of vodka.
From what I gather as I read the article, the law is designed so the clerks no longer have to figure out if someone should be carded. It becomes a non issue if everyone must present ID to purchase beer.
My opinion of it? I think if a clerk can’t figure out when someone is obviously over 30 (the age that most vendors post signs that they card) than he/she has no business behind a cash register.
Not only will people without identification be inconvenienced, so will people on the way out to the boat with nothing but a fishing rod and bait. Not everyone carries their wallets everywhere they go. Now a 75 year old grandpa needs to remember his ID to get his 6 pack of PBRs? Seems silly.
We already require people to carry their driver’s license whenever they’re behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. We also require permanent US residents (i.e. green card holders) to carry their green cards around whereever they go. It seems to me that it’s a minor inconvenience to carry your ID around if you plan to buy alcohol.
Besides, if you’re “on the way out to the boat,” you’re probably driving to get there. Presumably then, you should have your driver’s license on your person.
I don’t know- I think it would be like making people pay 500 bucks to have a ID card necessary to buy lottery tickets. Its kind of like a state trying to control what certain segments of adult society are able to do. Homeless shouldn’t spend their money on booze, but is it a states place to make sure they have a hard time doing so? Will underage drinking be curbed by this? Not even close.
I am bothered by the law for reasons you allude to. Laws like this (and like jay-walking) are great opportunities for selective enforcement / picking on people you don’t like the look of. I for instance rarely get carded, but my ex (who is a black African, which is apparently quite sketchy-looking) got carded all the time (and as a result didn’t drink, since his only legal ID was his passport (containing his visa) and then his Canadian permanent resident card (both documents of extraordinary value, not something to be taken out for a night on the town).
ID is very hard to come by. Lots of us (even normal people like me who aren’t homeless or undocumented immigrants or people who circumstances have separated from their wallets) don’t have drivers licenses and aren’t comfortable carrying our passports around everywhere, and there’s no other legal form of ID unless we’re in some organization that produces specific government-approved ID (like a university or the military, which I, like most people, am not). There used to be something called the Age of Majority Card, which was issued by the gvt precisely so that people like me could get alcohol, but (a) lots and lots of clerks and bouncers didn’t recognize it as legal ID (?!?!) and (b) it was easily forged, so they don’t do that any more.
It seems to me to be basically a good way to unaccountably keep “undesirables” out of your establishment, and to ensure that people who are already disenfranchised lose access to even more benefits of society. Decisions about whether homeless people or undocumented immigrants should be permitted to drink alcohol are societal ones that should not be made and enforced in this underhanded way.
In the total absence of any sort of evidence that this would have any beneficial effect on underage drinking, the costs of such a practice are unacceptably high.
Sobering up might get some of them off the street, but not others. I think it’s mean-spirited to begrudge them something that relieves the pain of their lives on the most basic level.
Here, you just go to the DMV and get a state issued ID card. It looks like a drivers license, has the picture and everything but is only good for ID. It’s not all that hard to get.
I don’t think it is really that easy. I lost my wallet, I don’t have my check or credit cards, Social Security card, or DL. I went to go get my license and they told me I would need my birth certificate which I can’t find. I’m not sure what I’ll need to get my birth certificate. But in the meantime I don’t have access to my money and I have no way to prove who I am. I can only imagine if I were a homeless person.
I’ve seen people who were in their 30s who looked like they were in their early 20s. I’ve seen people in their early 20s who might have been mistaken for their early 30s. (I had a bunch of grey hair by the time I was 25.) I’ve also seen people that I had a very difficult time determining their age. None of the above happens to me all that often but it does happen on occasion.
Though I agree that the law is silly. If a company wants to have their own policy of checking ID that’s one thing. I don’t see why they need a law to make everyone check. Especially since they can already get in big trouble for selling to underaged people.
I had to order a copy of my birth certificate not long ago to get my Maryland license; I didn’t need anything, besides knowing who I am and where I was born and a credit card. I ordered it online and it arrived in a few weeks.
I thought Georgia already had this law, because when I lived there I remember seeing puzzled grandfatherly-looking guys being asked for ID. What effect this might have had on the homeless, I don’t know, but I can’t imagine that there aren’t people selling alcohol who wouldn’t just sell it to them without.
I bet a fair number of homeless people have some sort of ID from before they became homeless, too.
I think it’s a good idea. Anything that requires showing an ID should require it for everyone. I don’t think the best idea is to leave it up to the judgement call of a store clerk if they think someone looks over…what is it 25,27,30? (it seems to vary in places)
An across the board, buying alcohol requires valid ID rule makes sense to me. If anything, they should extend that to cigarettes as well.
If someone wants to get fucked up, he’s going to get fucked up. He’s better off using booze than all the other highly poisonous things that desperate people use to get fucked up - gasoline, glue, shoe polish, paint thinner…
