Can anyone confirm what’s typical for the various laws around the country? I should think that there’s not a law that requires a valid, specific form of identification, but only that identification be required if the person (for example) looks to be under 35 or if the person isn’t personally known to the cashier. Selling to a minor carries heavy fines and possible loss of license, so I imagine that when using an alternative ID, you’re not trying to make the law happy per se, but rather prove to the store owner/clerk that to their satisfaction that you’re not going to make them lose their license or expose them to fines.
Just adding that to buy liquor at a duty free, you must show a passport.
[QUOTE=ZipperJJ]
Could it just be store policy (as others have said)?
It seems reasonable that anyone allowed to ring out alcohol at Safeway has seen a valid drivers’ license from your state. In my county, at least, you have to be 18 to ring up alcohol at a store and most 18-year-olds have a license. When I worked at a store we did not get any lessons on “this is what a valid drivers license looks like” - I guess they expected us to know.
But I have never, ever seen a passport in person (I’m 27). Heck, I’ve never even seen one on film or online. If I was working at a store there is no way I would be able to know if you were showing me a real passport or something you just printed on your computer.
Seems to me that it would take a lot more time and effort for a store to ensure that employees could verify the validity of a passport than it would to just not accept them.
[/QUOTE]
If you’re printing a passport up on your computer, it would have been one hell of a lot easier to run off some fake drivers’ licenses instead. A passport looks pretty official.
Well, except now it looks a little like Bob Mackie designed it for Cher - it’s gone pink and lavender and extraordinarily holographic. And I got mine in early 2001, I bet they’re way more disco now.
I’d be SOL if they didn’t accept my passport, because that’s the only form of ID I have here (in English, anyway). I’ve never had a problem with buying alcohol with my passport as ID, whether at a store or a bar.
[QUOTE=Shoshana]
Just adding that to buy liquor at a duty free, you must show a passport.
[/QUOTE]
Not necessarily–I was flying through Shannon, Ireland, and was able to pick up 750ml of Irish Whiskey, no questions asked.
Tripler
No passports, and no kiddin’!
I had the same problem in Oregon a few years back-- I think the explanation was that the ID must have an address on it, and a passport doesn’t.
[QUOTE=Penchan]
I have a valid U.S. passport which is the only ID I have right now that shows my birthdate. I tried to use my passport to buy some alcohol from Safeway, and they told me that passports are now no longer acceptable forms of ID. How is it possible that I can use my passport as proper ID to exit the U.S. and enter another country, but I can’t use it as a form of ID when buying alcohol from the local grocery store?
[/QUOTE]
In most states, you can get a picture ID from the DMV that looks just like a driver’s license (of course it says it’s just a picture ID, of course).
[QUOTE=Rick]
This makes no sense. I am voting for the store doesn’t know its ass from a hole in the ground.
In the United States a passport trumps everything as a form of ID.
You can use a passport to get a driver’s license (6th bullet point), but you can’t use a driver’s license to get a passport
[/QUOTE]
Gets even more complicated. Check this out. So in Colorado, a passport’s** *not * ** good enough. Neither is a Birth Certificate from Texas or Puerto Rico ( 
what, nobody with a “foreign sounding” name is ever born in any other state? I know part of our problem is a catch-22 situation: since every time the fakers break the security features in our papers and seals, we change them around, nobody’s ever sure what IS the current “real” certificate…)
The passport does NOT necessarily “trump all other ID”: there is NO statute compelling all state governments or all private parties to accept the passport as prima-facie proof of identity in** ALL ** circumstances . Part of the problem is, as mentioned, that it does NOT show your permanent address. part of it is that the Passport Office did not (not sure if under PATRIOT they have stiffened the rules) do too thorough of a “background check” on the personal identifying information submitted. The Passport’s primary function is to tell other governments on behalf of the US government: “Yeah, he’s one of ours”; it’s an immigration document, not a national ID card.
[QUOTE=Balthisar]
Can anyone confirm what’s typical for the various laws around the country? I should think that there’s not a law that requires a valid, specific form of identification, but only that identification be required if the person (for example) looks to be under 35 or if the person isn’t personally known to the cashier. Selling to a minor carries heavy fines and possible loss of license, so I imagine that when using an alternative ID, you’re not trying to make the law happy per se, but rather prove to the store owner/clerk that to their satisfaction that you’re not going to make them lose their license or expose them to fines.
[/QUOTE]
You might not be aware, but since you’re living in Oakville it might come in handy… the LCBO only accepts driver’s licenses, military IDs, Canadian citizenship cards , passports or BYID cards (Issued by the LCBO). cite - look under the BYID heading
Ontario doesn’t even recognise their own health cards as valid ID (supposedly some huge counterfeit deal when the new green trillium format came out).
I was living in Guelph and Hamilton for the past 6 years, and for 4 of those, I had kept my Quebec IDs valid (since I was there as a student). Lots of fun that was, since the Quebec cards don’t explicitly say 'Date of Birth" (in either language). It is located on the card as part of your permanent code: Radware Bot Manager Captcha In that example, the birthdate is December 9th, 1966. What was doubly fun, is that my driver’s license was the old format, which didn’t look like the one in the link, while my SO’s (now hubby) had the new format, so if they carded us both, we’d end up showing two totally different Québec driver’s licenses! When invariably lead to the person asking us if we had other ID, which meant we’d bring out our Québec medicare cards, but since Health cards aren’t valid in Ontario… well, by that point either an experienced employee or manager would step in, or they would just give us the damn alcohol/let us into the bar because it they figured it was way too complicated to be a couple of underaged kids trying to scam them.
[QUOTE=JRDelirious]
Gets even more complicated. Check this out. So in Colorado, a passport’s** *not * ** good enough. Neither is a Birth Certificate from Texas or Puerto Rico ( what, nobody with a “foreign sounding” name is ever born in any other state? I know part of our problem is a catch-22 situation: since every time the fakers break the security features in our papers and seals, we change them around, nobody’s ever sure what IS the current “real” certificate…)
[/QUOTE]
From your link
It is pretty obvious to me that Mr. Cooke has never applied for a passport. :rolleyes: Read the requirements to get a US passport in my link. A certified birth certificate most assuredly gives you legal residency.
Since here in California I can use a passport to obtain a DL but I can’t use a DL to obtain a passport, I stand by my comment.
[QUOTE=Tripler]
Not necessarily–I was flying through Shannon, Ireland, and was able to pick up 750ml of Irish Whiskey, no questions asked.
Tripler
No passports, and no kiddin’!
[/QUOTE]
I presume the comment was in the context of America, along with the rest of the thread.
And yeah, I too have always used (and assumed) my passport as vaild ID in America. Mind you, having an Irish one gets a lot of people on your side 
Have you ruled out stupidity?
I went with my son to get his learner’s permit last year and brought his passport for ID. Not good enough!! He’s free to enter and leave the country and various foreign security checkpoints, but cannot get his learner’s permit. The Registry of Motor Vehicles requires at least TWO forms of ID, so I came back with his birth certificate, social security card, AND passport. Of course, to get the passport in the first place, he had to show his birth certificate, etc.
Never mind, it’s Massachusetts.
Rick, that just means that the Colorado legislators enacted that statute under incorrect premises – if the legislative intent was to verify citizenship or legal-immigrant status, I agreee the passport (or naturalization/residency papers) should suffice. (And we already mentioned Colorado’s presumption that two specific jurisdictions have “unreliable” birth certificates.)
Still, how California runs their DMV or Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages does not affect how any of the other 49 states and 6 nonstate organized territories do, or how private businesses handle it – so any of them IS free to require other ID than the passport for purposes other than citizenship status, until the feds override them.
[QUOTE=Rick]
Read the requirements to get a US passport in my link. A certified birth certificate most assuredly gives you legal residency.
Since here in California I can use a passport to obtain a DL but I can’t use a DL to obtain a passport, I stand by my comment.
[/QUOTE]
So, you’re right, the certified BC is proof of citizenship (in fact, until this year, to and from most of the rest of the Americas it was sufficient proof of citizenship for a US citizen to travel). The Driver’s License is NO good as proof of citizenship/residency, **but it IS ** accepted to identify yourself to the passport agency as the second-ID document they require.
In any case, what happens is that there is a whole mess of tautological requirements with ALL these IDs . . . so for a passport you need a BC + a second official ID that MAY include a driver’s license; for a DL you need a BC + a second official ID that depending on your location may or may not include a passport…; and on top of it a state or private entity may decide that a passport is proof of citizenship but NOT of identity…
…I say it’s a plot to get us to ask for universal IDs just out of frustration… 
[QUOTE=mnemosyne]
You might not be aware, but since you’re living in Oakville it might come in handy… the LCBO only accepts driver’s licenses, military IDs, Canadian citizenship cards , passports or BYID cards (Issued by the LCBO). cite - look under the BYID heading
[/QUOTE]
Holy cow! That’s almost literally an “allowed-to-purchase-alcohol” license! On my many trips to The Beer Store or the few trips to LCBO, I’ve never been carded. In the cited link, though, I didn’t see any mention of other ID cards that are accepted – does it specify driver’s licenses in the general sense, or specifically Ontario driver’s licenses? I can’t imagine they’d want to lose so much money by turning down all of the Michigan licenses (including mine) that are floating around here.
Is there LCBO and The Beer Store equivalents back in Quebec, or does the government there let the free market reign? Back in Michigan, it’s easy to get a license to sell beer, but the MLCC is pretty tight with liquor licenses. It’s still the monopoly supplier to businesses, and until recently had price controls on all liquor statewide. Interestingly by going to “free market” with prices, I’ve only seen prices go up.
Also in your link I see reference to “illegal wine makers,” but yet in the area I’m staying at, I know of at least two places that let you make your own wine on their premises. As a home-beer-brewer back home, I know that home wine making is popular, too. Is that not the case in Ontario?
In Massachusetts, to buy liquor, a MA driver’s license, a MA liquor ID, a US (maybe foreign as well) passport, and a US military ID are all equally valid and will be accepted anywhere. I have never had a problem using a passport to obtain liquor, not even a comment, and I have used it many times. Out of state IDs will often require a corroborating form of ID, and may legally be refused, though generally businesses don’t turn away customers just because they are allowed to.
To obtain a MA drivers license after moving from another state, you need your out-of-state license, a document proving MA residency, a Social Security card or passport, a document proving your date of birth, and a document proving your signature. The out-of-state license can be used to prove date of birth or signature, but not both. I believe the same goes for a passport. The way the brochure is written, it looks like a Social Security card is also required, in addition to either a Social Security card or a passport. Here’s a pdf of the booklet. From the looks of it, I’m guessing a MA ID of any type is a bit harder to obtain than a passport.
[QUOTE=waterj2]
In Massachusetts, to buy liquor, a MA driver’s license, a MA liquor ID, a US (maybe foreign as well) passport, and a US military ID are all equally valid and will be accepted anywhere.
[/quote]
FWIW I’ve had my (foreign) passport accepted in Cambridge numerous times.
[QUOTE=Balthisar]
Holy cow! That’s almost literally an “allowed-to-purchase-alcohol” license! On my many trips to The Beer Store or the few trips to LCBO, I’ve never been carded. In the cited link, though, I didn’t see any mention of other ID cards that are accepted – does it specify driver’s licenses in the general sense, or specifically Ontario driver’s licenses? I can’t imagine they’d want to lose so much money by turning down all of the Michigan licenses (including mine) that are floating around here.
[/QUOTE]
I can’t speak for now, but when I worked at the Beer Store back in the 90s, we’d take anythng as long as:
– It was issued by a recognized government.
– It had a picture and a date of birth.
The documents listed above (passports, driver’s licenses, etc.) all conformed to the above.
Look especially at the first point–“issued by a recognized government.” I saw driver’s licenses from all across Canada, from a number of US states, and from various other places too. Mostly these were passports (really, if you’re here on business or personal purposes from someplace else except the US, you’d hve a passport), but occasionally other documents would pop up as well. I recall seeing a Trinadadian driver’s license, for example. But most foreigners (except Americans) carried passports, which were fine.
So yes, Michigan licenses were fine. So were ones from New York, Alberta, Quebec, Ohio, and so on. And UK passports, Venezuelan passports, etc. etc. etc. But that was then; as I said, I don’t know about now.
[QUOTE=Rick]
This makes no sense. I am voting for the store doesn’t know its ass from a hole in the ground.
In the United States a passport trumps everything as a form of ID.
You can use a passport to get a driver’s license (6th bullet point), but you can’t use a driver’s license to get a passport
[/QUOTE]
That’s because a passport is proof of identity and citizenship. A driver license is proof of identity but not * proof of citizenship*. You can present your driver license as proof of identity when you apply for a passport; however, you must also provide proof of citizenship.
[QUOTE=jjimm]
I had a major problem with this in Indiana in the early 1990s: at that time British driver’s licences didn’t have photo ID on them, or date of birth. And the bouncers on the door of the bars had no idea what they were looking at. Most of them just took my word for it. IIRC, one of them asked for photo ID so I gave my passport and that was acceptable.
[/QUOTE]
I lived in Bloomington, Indiana from 1985 - 1995 as a resident, interrupted for a year when we lived in Strasbourg, France. When we came back, all of the stores selling alcohol had clamped down on IDs to the point that it was ridiculous. The problem had been fake IDs and the state alcohol enforcement people had busted more than one cashier. The thing was that Bloomington, being a college town, had a small but well established fake-ID industry on campus, and requiring Indiana state IDs only didn’t address that problem. The other problem was that cashiers were not being trained well, if at all, to spot inconsistancies that were the result of borrowed or fake IDs. It is much, much harder to fake a passport, but as ZipperJJ pointed out, he wouldn’t have known what to look for, as he hadn’t been trained.
Vlad/Igor