Alchoholic beverage laws are some of the most restrictive and nonsensical ever passed, created by overbearing Puritans whose idea of an ideal society is rooted in the deep bible-belt. You know, the one where the legislature passes a law making their county dry, then go next door to the wet county to celebrate.
Duffer, while Milwaukee may have additional restrictions, it is illegal in Wisconsin state-wide to sell package liquor after 9PM any day, although bars stay open much later (and some people start drinking the next day at 10AM – after all, this is Wisconsin, where every corner has 3 bars and 6 beer signs). I think the package prohibition extends until 6AM.
Before I knew this, I remember a friend of mine, a white-haired grandmother, who had just gotten into town late and was planning on preparing a late supper for herself and her husband. We ran into each other at the supermarket, and I helped her pick out a small bottle of wine to complement her meal. But when she got to the cash register, it was after 9PM and she couldn’t buy the wine. The idea of this elderly woman – whose idea of a good time was a sedate plate of pasta in front of the TV before bed – getting stinking drunk on a single bottle of wine, hopping into her car and driving into a schoolbus full of happy kids is pretty farfetched, but that is what the law is designed to prevent.
Meanwhile, the people who were really dangerous were hopping into their cars from the bars, weaving their way home, and they could legally drink all night. Apparently the ABC laws define morality as bar drinking (where you must go home later) = OK, but home drinking (where you need not drive after) = Wrong.
And in Wisconsin, underage cashiers cannot sell items that they could not legally buy. I had a 5oz big bottle of bitters in my groceries one day, and the cashier had to call someone older to pass it over the scanner. If you look at the bitters label, it is marked “40% alchohol”, so it qualified as an intoxicating beverage. But can you imagine someone trying to drink the entire bitters bottle to get drunk? You’d throw up first. And if you diluted it enough to make it palatable, it would have all the potable potency of Pepsi.
Well, I left Milwaukee soon after the law was enacted, before that you could buy off-sale till midnight. So it wasn’t state law at that point. But again, I’ve been gone for 10 years.
Instead of making 3 posts, I’ll get two more in this one. As far as not working with alcohol while under 21, this must also be new. When I was there, I worked at Ron’s Derby on 81st St in West Allis from age 18-20. At the time, you could bartend under 21 as long as you were 18 and someone 21 or older was working the same bar.
And with the 9 p.m. cut-off, I just found it absurd that the reason given the media was to curb domestic violence. I mean, if someone is going to get shitfaced to the point of beating their spouse, it seems that the liquor coffers will be well stocked long before 9. In addition, if it’s 10 and a guy wants a few beers, I’d rather he walk a few blocks to the store, rather than drive to a bar and then drive home after he had his fill.
But I really do want to know when the state laws kicked in. They had to have come from Norquist’s edict.
I’m pretty sure it’s illegal in most places for adults to give alcohol or tobacco to minors. In your case, it looked like your dad, an adult, may have been buying tobacco for you, a minor. Had the cashier not carded you, he would have seen reasonable evidence of an illegal activity being committed, and not acted upon it, which in itself is illegal in some places. IANAL and I didn’t do any research on this before posting, so I may be totally wrong. The policy makes sense to me, though. And I’m a 17-year-old who occasionally buys cigarettes–it would be in my best interest for stores not to card.
Similar but not exact…
I used to live in a housing co-op, and we always bought our food on either Saturday or Sunday (usually Sunday at roughly two in the afternoon, when people were mostly over their hangovers…ah, college :p). I had requested cooking sherry for a meal I was making for the whole house on, you guessed it, Sunday evening.
The foodbuyers roll in and start carrying in the food.
“Um, LPN, we couldn’t get the cooking sherry.”
“Huh? Were they out? It’s usually by the soy sauce…”
All y’all Texans recite it after me now: “Nope. We tried to buy it on Sunday.”
That’s right. You can’t buy alcohol from the store on Sunday. You can go to the bar and get shitfaced Saturday night, sleep until 2 on Sunday afternoon, and then go get shitfaced Sunday night, but you can’t buy cooking sherry! Even with another $300 worth of groceries! I mean, anything could happen!
:rolleyes:
Duffer, I don’t know what decade the Wisconsin drinking age laws changed, but they did. When I was a kid, they had a two-tier age law; you could drink wine & beer at 18, but had to wait for 21 for harder stuff.
As you might expect, this led to distinctly different bar hangouts segregated by age groups. I remember a bar that had a loud rock band and was always spilling out into the parking lot with eager kids next door to an over-21 establishment with a sedate, but sparse crowd of old men sitting morosely at the bar nursing their cocktails. Like night & day.
And the blue laws in some states prohibited you from buying more than just liquor on Sunday. In Missouri, the giant Katz “drug” store had ropes around the clothing and most other displays on Sunday in the 60’s. You could linger to lick your lips at the lunch counter and find the pharmacy, but not select shirts or socks on Sunday.
So, is there a maximum age ones compatriots can be in order to purchase alcohol when around them?
For instance, if I tried to purchase beer while with my 10 year-old sister, would that be allowed? If she were 16? 3? Or are employees supposed to use “common sense”?
Wrong. 
Kansas takes the cake with that one.
As for selling… at the store where Ardred works, if he even suspects that the beer is for a minor he can refuse the sale. CYA, always… especially when dealing with the alcohol police.