OK, this topic seemed to hijack one of the other threads here in IMHO, so I went ahead and started its very own thread (the idea was CnoteChris’s, thanks C)
Anyway, for those new to the topic: “Second-party” alcohol sales is the [illegal] act of having someone 21 or older purchasing alcohol for someone who is underage.
One point was brought up about the extent to which a seller should ask people for ID for alcohol sales. Some examples:
3 people walk into a grocery store, one of them 21 years old, the other two 19 and 18. They all wander to the alcohol section, talking amongst themselves, pointing to some bottles of alcohol, etc. The 21 year old grabs a six-pack of beer and brings it up to the counter.
A 22 year old is about to enter a liquor store, but is stopped in the parking lot by a 17 year old, asking if the 22 year old will buy them a bottle of rum, if they pay them for it.
A 37 year old comes into a gas station, sees a friend of his daughter and talks with her (let’s say she is 19 years old) for a little bit. He then goes and picks up a 12 pack of beer, and she picks up a loaf of bread and some candy bars.
What should the seller do in each of these situations?
The seller should ask to see the IDs of all three persons, since it seems like they would all be partaking in the alcoholic beverages. Even if the 18 and 19 year olds REALLY had no intentions of drinking the alcohol, the seller has no way of knowing for sure, and should thus card all 3 of them.
Say the 22 year old comes to the counter with a bottle of beer and some rum. --On a side note: the seller obviously would not know the details of the conversation outside… the 17 year old could have very well been asking for a phone number or something innocent–. The seller can LAWFULLY refuse to sell the 22 year old the alcoholic beverages, unless the ID of the person outside is presented. (Again, even if the person outside had no intentions of obtaining or drinking alcohol… the seller doesn’t know for sure).
The seller could ask for the ID of the 19 year old girl… I wouldn’t, however. In the situation I described, I have no reason to believe that the 19 year old was intending to have the 37 year old buy alcohol for her (even if she actually does have these intentions).
It ultimately comes down to a matter of judgement of the seller of the alcohol. If the seller has a reason to believe that a second-party sale is taking place, they can refuse to sell the buyer alcohol. This method is obviously far from perfect, but you would be genuinely surprised by how often you would see Situation 1) occur (at least in a gas station).
I just want to say that I agree that this law seems a bit out there, and even a crock, in some cases, but it is the law none-the-less. All it takes is one slip-up of the seller, and all of a sudden they are hit with huge fines, perhaps jail time, and maybe even worse.
So… what is everyones else’s opinions about this law?
Then again, I think America’s drinking laws are ridiculous in general.
I’ve been in situation one plenty of times. When I was twenty and my boyfriend was twenty-one, we lived together. Naturally, we shopped for groceries together. If he wants to buy a bottle of wine along with the weeks groceries, he ought to be able to do so without getting harrassed. Since I know more about wine than he does, naturally I’m going to be pointing and chattering in the aisles. It’s absolutly stupid that I should have to go out and sit in the car while he makes his purchase or risk getting denied and having to go to a different store and pick out our groceries all over again.
I think the law has too many what if’s or loopholes. Based to much on the subjectivity of the seller, and the viewpoint of those pressing charges.
When in High School, people always used Daryl, who was the 25 year old assistant football coach who had around 10 year supply of Alcohol in his basement.
It’s a worthless law. Whenever anyone at school wanted beer from the grocery store, we all knew to just have the of-age person go in by themselves or just get in a separate line.
Often times they’ll just make the underager wait outside while the sale is enacted. Yeah, that makes sense. Most times, though, one ID is enough to satisfy the clerk, in my experience. I don’t think any of these laws are particularly effective in keeping teenagers from drinking; personally, I’d be for some sort of “tiered” system. You know, you’d be allowed to buy, say, a single drink with a meal when you turned 16, then up to 3 at 18 (and be allowed to enter bars), and be granted full privileges at 21 – assuming you’ve avoided legal problems during this “probationary” period.
When I worked as a cashier in a grocery store, we absolutely had to card everyone in a party that was buying alcohol. In Vermont, grocery stores can only sell beer and wine, you need to go to one of the state-run liquor stores for anything else at all. It was also store policy to not take out-of-state ID, and to also not accept national ID like the kind carried by people in the army.
Once I had asked someone for ID, and they couldn’t provide it, I could not sell to them, period. Even if you were with a woman in the line, and she looked like she was 35 and you looked like you were under 27, if she couldn’t provide ID, I couldn’t sell to you. That was store policy.
I was given a lot of crap about it in the 3 1/2 years that I worked there. I had at least 8-10 people walk and leave their orders for me to take care of. This was years ago, so it meant that anything that had been checked in (and a lot of people seemed to put their wine last) had to be un-checked before the order could be voided.
One of my fellow clerks lost her job when she sold wine to somebody who slipped and fell in the parking lot, and happened to be helped up by a policeman who decided that he was too drunk to have been sold to. I saw the man when he was in the store. There was nothing about his behavior that said that he had been drinking more than a single beer, but I guess he can hold it in while he buys or something. The store also tried to make her pay the $1,000 fine. I have no idea how that turned out. I can only guess not well, since she was a single mom of two who had been working for minimum wage at a grocery store for two years.
I can only take heart that the fourth time the store filed for bankrupcy, they finally went under.
I agree with you, Guinastasia, about taking it out on the clerk, and the voting thing.
And doreen, again this would ultimately depend on the sales clerk selling the alcohol. I have sold alcohol to a father who was carrying an infant… I have no reason to believe that the infant is going to open a can of booze and get totally sloshed.
But some other clerk may very well not sell you the alcohol, just for the mere thought of having the infant get a hold of the alcohol, drinking it, going to he hospital, and then having the situation somehow blamed on them for making the sale.
I don’t see either case as necessarily wrong, both are justified.
The system would be somewhat similar to Driver’s Licenses… you go down to your local Department of Alcoholic Beverages when you turn 16, 18, 21, whatever it is in your state, stand in line for a few hours, take some dumb little test to prove you can be a responsible drinker, and get the license, which must be shown to the cashier/bartender in order to purchase alcoholic beverages. Furthermore, you can’t have a Driver’s License and a Drinking License at the same time… if you have one, you must surrender it in order to apply for the other. Of course, you can swap as many times as you want.
Think it’d work?
On two occasions underage folks have asked me to buy alcohol for them, both times when I was 20 years old (in California). The first time was outside a convenience store at night. I was wearing a cape and carrying a huge walking staff. I stared at the underage guy and cackled insanely until he went away. The second time I was walking around downtown in full daylight with a pair of enormous horns on my head when a group of teenagers approached and asked me if I was 21. I informed them that, being a frequent time traveller, I wasn’t quite sure exactly how old I was. Hee hee hee. They don’t need alcohol to mess up their minds; I can do it for them. >:-D
LilShieste
Sorry, I forgot to specify that it was Gravity’s post I wasn’t clear about.
But I have a problem with this:
The law or policy either requires cashiers to get ID from everyone or to use their judgement.If the law or policy requires ID from everyone in the party, then the blame is on the makers of that law or policy. If it allows the cashier to use their his or her own judgement, (for example,to sell me beer when I’m shopping with my son,but refuse to sell to the one 21 year old with a group of underage teenagers),and the cashier refuses to sell to someone with an infant for fear that somehow the infant will drink it and end up in the hospital, the problem is clearly with the cashier. And while I certainly wouldn’t be abusive to the cashier, I’d complain to the management. Just as I would if the store policy accepted out-of-state or military ID’s, and one cashier decided that he or she wouldn’t accept them.
In Australia, packaged alcohol is sold in liquor stores, not at supermarkets or corner stores. They are often attached to supermarkets, but they’re considered separate premises. Simply put, an underage person (our legal drinking age is 18, btw) has no business in liquor store premises. It’s then a simple matter for the liquor store cashier to request ID of a customer he or she suspects to be underage.
It’s quite similar to a nightclub or pub – no entry to minors (with certain exceptions for pubs/restaurants). It is an offence for these ‘licensed’ places to have minors on the premises - read, big fines!
Of course, this doesn’t prevent adults buying alcohol and supplying it to minors outside the liquor store. Personally I can’t think of any way to stop that (nor does it particularly concern me).
No, I would have had no problem selling you wine were you with your son. I would have asked the manager if you were with your 19 year old son - and I know he would have said it was OK. That would have been just to cover my own butt, though.
I think that we should have clear, national laws that govern alcohol sales, period. I don’t think that cashiers and bartenders should have to perform such a tightrope act just to do their jobs. The alcohol and tobacco laws and policies at the store I worked in were more complex then the whole rest of the job put together.
Putting that much burden on a regular convenience store or grocery store cashier is ridiculous. Gravity god to see you’re smart enough to cover your ass.
At a glance, that “second-party” law seems abosultely unenforceable. The underage drinkers could wait around the block, or otherwise way out of sight and far away from the store. If however, the law is designed to punish the legally-old-enough-to-drink adult who handed the alcohol to the kids, that’s a different story.
In Ontario, Canada, it’s similar to what Narrad described. There are specific stores, The Beer Store and the LCBO Store (Liquor Control Board of Ontario), and wine stores (which are specifically licenced by he LCBO). Underage people are allowed on the premises, but unless they are young children with their parents, you rarely see anyone under 19 (our legal age) in the store. It makes it much easier to control the pruchase of alochol, but also isn’t infallible – again, you just had to bribe an unscrupulous adult, or stay at home and send your older friend to go get it for you.
I was carded last weekend at the Beer Store. I’m 30 (as I said, our driking age is 19 – there is no way in hell I look 18!) Once in awhile, if you’re young-looking they’ll ask you to hand over your ID. Not only to they check the date, but a few times they also wrote my licence number in a ledger (very, very rare occurence, but boy did the “Eek! Big Brother!” alarms go off in my head.)
On the downside: If the U.S. swtiched over to our system, it would mean crippling loss of revenue for small stores. (We had problems when our government decided that Drug Stores/Pharmacies couldn’t sell tobacco – huge losses!)
Some states do this, including Pennsylvania. What makes it worse is not that I can’t just go to the nearby grocery store to get a six-pack, but unless I want to go to a bar (and pay far too much for a six-pack there) I have to go all the way to the “state distributor” and buy it by the case. I don’t drink heavily enough to need a case.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that in all my gas station jobs I haven’t had to deal with alcohol sales. Tobacco is bad enough, where you have to make a guess at age. With alcohol you get all the bullshit of tobacco laws combined with having to make decisions about whether or not the buyer is already intoxicated.
Was a shift manager at a SuperAmerica Gas Station for 2 years while I was in college. Regarding second party sales, I was always taught, by the area manager that if they come up to the counter together, they should be considered together.
There’s too much room for perception in these laws. I wouldn’t card the child if a parent/child customer came up to the counter with alcohol. I would if it was a parent with their older/adult children (16ish but under 25ish). I passed 2 internal checks and one by the state. You get a $50 dollar gift certificate if you pass the internal ones :).
Whereas concerning underage people who are sitting outside trying to get people to buy the liquor/cigarettes, we had to watch for these also. Cops around here called them “Hey You’s”. The clerk can get into trouble for these too. Its retarded. If the cop feels that you can see them pulling “Hey You’s” and you sell to the person buying for them, you’re just as liable. But if they’re behind the store and you can’t see them, then you are not.
Look. The reason why they have it is because of liability issues. Now I’m nineteen but I work as a supervisor as a grocery store. For the last two years I have heard about it but it wasn’t until today that one of my coworkers showed this to me. I honestly have one thing to say.
I think we need this law.
I think you shouldn’t hate this law until you step in my shoes, until you realize all the scrutinizes we and other clerks have to go through just so you can get your damn beer. We aren’t trying to be the bad guys. Most of us are uptight about it because we don’t want lose our job. If the police do find out where the alcohol was purchased and who sold it to them, where I work, it’s an automatic termination. No suspension, just fired. Not only that, we have to use some of our pay to help with the court costs and any other payment fees that might be applied.
So maybe you are mad that you didn’t get your beer. That’s fine by me. But I really don’t want to lose my job just because you want to get drunk on a Saturday night or something.
So just show your freaking ID. It’s not the end of the world. Grow up.
