Some Passing Thoughts about Showing ID to Buy Alcohol

In My Humble Opinion
1

When I first emigrated to New York, I arrived as a hitchhiker. I had a valid driver’s license issued by the state of New Mexico. It took me quite a while to get settled up here, but eventually I was indoors, enrolled as a college student at SUNY / Old Westbury, making some friends on campus, doing well with my courses… and still toting around a New Mexico driver’s license because a) I didn’t have a car and b) Dept of Motor Vehicles had a really dismal reputation, like it was a very unfriendly red tape authoritarian machine where you didn’t want to spend a day any more often than you had to.

I want to talk about a couple of 7-11 stores that were somewhat close to campus. Handful of miles in each direction. There is no alcohol sold on campus. Keep in mind that I’m not up here with a car.

The one most nearby at that time would not accept an out-of-state ID as proof of age for the buying of beer. “Has to be a New York driver’s license”. I now have more of an understanding for her policy if that was indeed her policy. Because of the lower likelihood that you’d recognize a fake ID if it were from another state if you were the clerk making the call.

At the time I was just being insistent that reciprocity meant that could not possibly be what the law says. Like I’m a law student or something, but I mean that was my understanding, that the states were bound to honor certain reciprocal extensions of authority and certification issued by each other, and driver’s licenses were among those areas of reciprocity.

But meanwhile the 7-11 farther down the road was initially accepting my New Mexico driver’s license as proof of age, so I’d walk the extra mile and a half to buy a six-pack of beer. Then my license expired. And although they might have missed it for a few purchases, eventually someone noticed and said “This ID can’t be accepted for proof of age, it’s expired”. But to me that doesn’t make sense.

“This license is for me to be legally able to drive. It’s expired, so nobody knows if I’m currently licensed to drive or regarded as qualified to do so or forbidden from ever doing it again. But it also says I was born on this date like it says here. And it’s still an official document, it says I was licensed to drive between this issuing date and this expiration date, and if I got charged with driving without a license back then but the trial is today, this document, although expired, officially says I’m not guilty, I was licensed as of that date. Well, it’s also true that I’m still a person born on this date of birth. So… defend why you can’t accept it as proof of what we’re trying to prove here!”

Older me has to admit that the same notion of reciprocity, like in my earlier argument, sort of applies to the notion of what it means for a license to be expired.

We also have to talk about how accepting date of birth on an expired driver’s license as a legitimate proof of age carves out an unusual exception. Each bureaucracy ‘wants’ to run things. If you’re being formal about how a bunch of rule-bound bureaucracies measure reciprocity in things, exceptions are harder to advocate for. The pressure to be efficient results in a tendency to generalize, and to make policy according to generalization, ignoring exceptions and then designating them pathologies and failures.

2

Having known a lot of people when I was in college who sold their expired DLs to underaged people to use while buying booze (back in the day when expired DLs weren’t automatically taken away)…it makes sense. The store may have a blanket policy to not honor expired IDs, because they have had enough underage kids trying to use them in the past.

3

OK, I was actually unaware of that. I knew about fake IDs but I see what you mean, if people sell their expired IDs and enough people are doing it so you could find a decently close match…

4

I have had several friends over the years (especially in College) who attended shows in Dallas, but who couldn’t drink because their out of state ID wasn’t accepted by the club. Whether this was a problem or not seemed to be a spotty problem. The TABC site seems to state that any government issued ID, even ones issued by foreign governments are valid to accept.

5

What gets me angry- Target, which insists on scanning my ID to sell a bottle of wine to my AARP self.

And Target has had several data breaches.

So, I no longer shop there. I do not mind showing my ID so much, but no scanning.

6

When I worked at 7-Eleven in 2022, I was supposed to check ID every time (even though coworkers advised me not to do it) and was required to reject IDs that were expired.

There were several people who were pissed at me for checking ID every time no matter how much they came in, and the lack of support on that from my coworkers probably helped contribute to my stay in the psych ward.

7

I’ve inhabited a few psych wards myself.

8

Convenience store cashier here. My training is that for the purchase of age restricted items: alcohol, tobacco products including vapes, rolling papers, etc. you need to have valid picture ID. We can legally accept any current US driver license or official state id, foreign Driver licences , Military ID, Passports. That is it. No student id’s with birth certificate (many people think this will work. what gets me is when a parent comes in with the person trying to buy with student id and and expect me to sell to the person because the parent is with them)

Expired ID, or driver licenses are NOT valid picture id. Mostly for the reasons above, sold or stolen. There are all sorts of fakes out there. Some blatant scams that take advantage of immigrants or non-citizens.

As for scanning ID’s; we are required to do this for anyone buying age restricted items. If I go into the store I work at to buy age restricted stuff I have my ID scanned, and I have worked there 20 years. To my knowledge my company does not sell data of any kind. We don’t track you or what you buy. We just need proof you are old enough to purchase, and who you say you are. ETA: actually our system only scans the birthdate and calculates whether the ID is current. I don’t think it can tell who you are or anything. It just isn’t that sophisticated.

Some will insist that the company does track you or sell your data. I cannot prove that the company does not. However, my job and ethical performance of my job is more important than someone’s conspiracy theories or hurt feelings. There are other places in town and I’d rather have them go elsewhere than berate me for doing my job. I won’t miss their business.

9

Interesting reason why they don’t accept expired ids. That makes sense. I’ve never had my old license taken away, btw.
But I suspect the reason for this is to protect the store from getting its license revoked. I believe the state sends around investigators checking on how well the store enforces the law, and selling a few more six packs to the few people affected is not going to be worth the risk of losing the ability to sell any kind of alcohol.

10

One of my coworkers told me that if I kept up asking the same people to show me their IDs, I stood a decent chance of getting a pop capped in my ass, which didn’t help my psychosis, I can tell you that much.

I saw so many people in a day that I didn’t remember any of the regulars, except this weird old guy who would stand around for hours every day and seldom buy anything.

11

Related anecdote. When I was a newish 21 year old in college, out of state, I was trying to buy alcohol in Colorado with my New Mexico driver’s license. This would have been around 1996, and NM licenses of the time… well, were not well made.

The cashier laughed his ass off and said “No way this is real kid, get out of here”.

I, shocked, said, it’s valid, and he, probably surprised at my certainty, dug out a small bible-sized book that apparently contained images of what the various IDs looked like. After a minute, he stared intently at the page, and said “Well DamnIfIKnow but these things look worse than Fake IDS!”.

He did ask me to confirm I was an out of state resident, and I showed him my student ID for the local college and said I was in the dorms for the school year. He shrugged and sold me the bottle.

For the record, my college ID did indeed look more modern and professional than my state issued drivers license.

12

The grocery store I work at got new registers a few months ago that require us to scan the ID. We used to be able to bypass age verification if the customer was obviously of A Certain Age, but we no longer have that option.

I can assure you that according to our regional head of IT, we don’t store any info from the scan - it just verifies that the ID is valid and you’re over 21. If you’re paying with a check, we do store the info from scanning your ID, but that’s been the case since the early '90s.

13

If it’s expired, it’s not an official document anymore.

That’s the legal reasoning, and the practical reasoning is that the newer version of the driver’s license could be different in some important way, and it’s not reasonable to expect businesses to keep their employees trained up on how to recognize every historical version of drivers’ license from a given state. In particular, your photo is no longer current, so it may not look like you.

By definition, an expired ID is not a valid document. It’s just a keepsake.

14

The states do.
Doesn’t mean a private entity has to accept it.

15

Thank you. I’ve been able to use my Canadian passport and my provincial driver’s license to buy alcohol and tobacco while in the United States.

Most of the time, anyway. I was once in Denver, Colorado, and went to Mile High Stadium for a Denver Broncos football game. Wanting a beer, I naturally went to a beer stand. I got carded (note that I was 40 at the time and looked it, but Mile High had a “we card everyone” policy), and I presented my Ontario driver’s license.

The young lady running the beer stand wasn’t sure if my licence was real. “I’ve never heard of ‘Ontario.’ Is it a real place?”

:roll_eyes:

Thankfully, her supervisor knew that Ontario was a province of Canada, and had the governmental authority to issue licences that can be used as IDs, so I got my beer. But still. Maybe a few geography lessons for Americans are in order. At least, you accept foreign driver’s licences, so again, thank you.

16

Nowadays I often feel like I should be demanding the person behind the counter show me ID before I’m prepared to believe they are old enough to be selling me alcohol.

17

I’ve had two annoying experiences with ID requirements. One was in my 20s trying to buy a case of beer in a supermarket in California. Asked for ID, I presented my Ontario driver’s license, and the twit cashier informed me that only California driver’s licenses were valid ID. You have to live in California and have a valid driver’s license to be able to buy beer? So I went across the street and bought the beer at a place where the thinking was more rational.

Another one was a few years ago right here at home. Now that grocery stores are allowed to sell wine and mixed drinks, I picked up a bottle of wine at a local supermarket. I was in my 70s at the time, but the cashier asked me for ID as proof of age. I had a good chuckle at the joke, but it turned out she was serious.

My assumption is that though the cashiers at the government liquor stores are trained to recognize possible under-age purchasers, grocery store clerks are not, and are thus ordered to check everyone for ID. But it does make for an amusing situation where a 75-year-old has to put down his cane to fish out a driver’s license to prove that he’s over 21!

18

There are famous (apocryphal?) stories of American clerks refusing to believe that New Mexico is a US state, not part of the country of Mexico.

When the OP mentioned their license was from NM I totally expected that kind of incident to be some part of their post.


tl;dr: Americans are idiots. Especially about geography other than their immediate neighborhood. And since the advent of GPS navigators, they’ve stopped learning about their local area too.

19

Although I do understand the consternation at us 70-somethings being carded, it seems obvious to me that clerks are just doing what they’re supposed to do. Getting annoyed at them is petty, unproductive, and misdirected. Just pull out your damned ID and get on with your life.

20

When I was around the age where such things mattered, certain states were known to have crappy paper driver’s licenses that were easily faked. New Mexico was one, and perhaps Kansas? Anyway many places wouldn’t accept them because of how easy they were to fake and/or how fake they looked - but some did…

I guess there is possibly a question of the law here - a store is required to ensure that all people buying limited-access products meet the requirements. But are they banned from adding additional requirements? Could I, a local liquor-store owner, decide I was only going to sell to 25-year olds? Is age a protected class in such a case?

I thought so too, and had a moment of extreme panic standing in an airport recently with only my expired driver’s license as ID (it had been renewed but the new one hadn’t arrived yet).

A quick search reassured me that for TSA purposes expired Real ID’s are valid for up to one year after expiration. I flew with no issues (other than Southwest Airlines having been turned into a smoldering ruin of its former self).

So there is at least one time when an expired ID is a valid document. I think there are other’s too (voting, perhaps?)