I believe there’s a (pretty universal?) law against a bartender serving you a drink if you are obviously intoxicated (though in my neck of the woods, this ‘law’ is seen as a gray-area - at least at the places I’ve hung out in).
Just wondering if there’s the same sort of standards (at least where you live) for the clerk at 7-11 being able to “refuse you service” if you stumble up to the counter with your 6-pack, while fumbling a bunch of quarters, dimes, and dollar-bills out of your pocket?
Well, in a bar there’s a valid assumption the drink will be consumed within a short time. A drunk person will get drunker.
A retail store could assume beer purchases are for consumption on another day. A customer that’s been drinking may be buying his next mornings hair of the dog that bit him. 
That may be enough to get around laws that prohibit serving drinks to someone that is intoxicated.
In WA, at least, a store clerk is not supposed to sell to someone who is intoxicated.
In CA, stores have signs posted that they will not sell alcoholic beverages to anyone who appears to be intoxicated. I’m pretty sure this is part of the law, and not just various stores’ private policies.
The law in Queensland (Australia) is that it’s illegal to sell alcohol to people who are drunk, disorderly, or under 18.
It’s also against the law for 7-11s and supermarkets to sell alcohol here, FWIW.
I used to be a sales clerk here in Arizona and sold alcoholic beverages as part of my job, including at Circle K. It is against state law to sell alcohol to anyone who appears to be under the influence. Penalties include a fine for the sales clerk and possible suspension of the establishment’s license.
How drunk is considered drunk? I mean, how inebriated do you have to be? What’s the actual text of the law?
In the UK, it’s illegal to sell alcohol to anyone under 18, anyone you believe to be buying for anyone under 18, anyone intoxicated, or (and I found this one bizarre) a policeman in uniform.
Surely it should be the responsibility of a policeman not to attempt to buy alcohol, rather than of some poor checkout person to stop them?
There was no good definition of ‘intoxicated’ though, it’s very much a value judgement.
IANA 7-11 clerk, but I was a cashier in a store that sold alcohol. From what I was told it doesn’t matter if the drunk person is buying it for now or later, you must refuse to sell it to them. If they were to do anything stupid or get hurt while intoxicated, the store would be held liable even if they were not on our property. We also had the right to refuse the sale to anyone we suspected was intoxicated.
My daughter once worked in a grocery store in VT, and recalls selling beer to a guy who appeared sober, but who stumbled on his way out of the store. She had to contact the manager, and they had to go through a huge rigamarole to document the entire transaction. So, yes, either through law or corporate policy, they are not allowed to sell to visibly intoxicated customers.
What type of stores can sell alcohol? In the U.S., most states allow any retail establishment willing to purchase an alcohol license to sell beer and wine. Their policy on hard liquor varies: some treat it like beer/wine, some will only sell it in state-owned liquor stores.
I was once refused the purchase of alcohol whilst in military uniform. The manager in question assumed the rule about coppers also meant soldiers, glad to say I got my beer…eventually.
ETA: After a year of reading and not posting…cherry busted 
Our local 7-eleven does not sell beer to obviously drunk people. But they will sell you bongs and rolling papers, and throw in free matches. You have to supply your own weed.
What does one have to do with the other? I assume that they’d sell an empty mug to a drunk person.
Interesting. I guess my dodge about buying beer for the next day doesn’t work.
Thankfully I’ve never tried buying alcohol under the OP’s hypothetical situation.
I did get rejected once at a grocery because the clock struck Midnight. I was in line at 11:40pm at a big grocery store. Only one lane open and two people with carts full of grocery’s. It was a couple minutes after midnight by the time I got to the cashier. Around here no liquor can be sold on Sunday. Sunday starts at midnight Sat. I bought the other grocery’s I had and left without my beer.
Exactly this.
Here’s the relevant section of the law in my state (Arizona).
"A licensee is liable for property damage and personal injuries or is liable to a person who may bring an action for wrongful death pursuant to section 12-612, or both, if a court or jury finds all of the following:
The licensee sold spirituous liquor either to a purchaser who was obviously intoxicated, or to a purchaser under the legal drinking age without requesting identification containing proof of age or with knowledge that the person was under the legal drinking age.
…
For the purposes of this section, “obviously intoxicated” means inebriated to such an extent that a person’s physical faculties are substantially impaired and the impairment is shown by significantly uncoordinated physical action or significant physical dysfunction that would have been obvious to a reasonable person."
http://www.azleg.gov/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/ars/4/00311.htm&Title=4&DocType=ARS
In other words, if a customer has slurred speech, bloodshot eyes, smells of alcohol, appears uncoordinated, or displays any of the other “classic” signs of drunkenness,the clerk may use his layman’s judgment to assume that person is indeed under the influence.
I used to be a member of a wine club, and would receive monthly shipments of wine. On the box they wine was delivered in was the warning, “Do not deliver to anyone obviously intoxicated.” So apparently UPS cannot do this either.
In Texas, it can be quite confusing. I was born and raised here and I’m still not sure of how many different variations there are. There are ‘dry’ counties, in which alcohol in any form is not permitted to be sold ‘county wide’. Some counties allow alcohol sales to be controlled by the individual towns and cities. And there are even cities where alcohol sales are prohibited in specific neighborhoods. :rolleyes:
In Houston, in a small area known as the Heights, the sale of beer and wine is prohibited in ‘corner stores’ and grocery stores (also, there are no liquor stores), yet the same neighborhood has ‘full’ bars (where beer, wine and hard liquor can be sold) and ‘ice houses’ (aka ‘beer joints’, where beer, wine and ‘set ups’ only are sold, meaning you can bring in your own hard liquor and they sell a ‘set up’ of ice, cups and mixer. ie:coke, sprite, o.j. etc.).
To top that off, there are no distinct divisions (ie: marked borders or limits) indicating where it is. 
In the UK it’s actually illegal to be drunk in public, and there’s a slightly more serious offence of being drunk in a pub. A pub landlord could lose his licence by selling alcohol to anyone that appeared drunk.
As far as what constitutes being drunk, the courts in the UK have long accepted that police officers are experts on drunkeness. They usually define being drunk as not being ill or injured and having most of the following symptoms:
Eyes glazed
Speech slurred
Unsteady on feet
Wetting themselves
Vomiting
Now you have to be pretty well gone for the last two, but it doesn’t take a lot of drink to get the first 3.
Also, the law about not selling alcohol to police in uniform is from a long time ago when Peel’s police used to know the exact closing times of all of the local drinking establishments and hang about the back doors as they closed, where the landlords would hand bottles of beer to them - kind of a protection racket. This is where the old folk song, “If you want to know the time, ask a policeman” came from.
Back in the dim, dark days of my youth, I was a night manager for 7-Eleven when I lived in Austin. We had standing orders to not sell booze to drunks. The Alcoholic Beverage Commission loved to nail folks for doing that; the store’s booze license would be suspended and the clerk got a hefty fine.
Of course, drunks would turn belligerent when we refused to sell to them. That was always fun.