I am not against universal carding, but where it isn't law, I have a problem with isolated stores making it a policy of carding people that are obviously old enough to purchase a given product and this policy isn't universally enforced by all employees at all times and isn't posted in any visible place for customers to see.
As an example I will use an incident that occured about a year or 2 ago:
My husband usually picks me up a pack of cigarettes on his way home from work because he can get them cheaper near his job than I can get them here. One night he had some car trouble and he called me at about midnight to say he was going to be a bit late coming home. Then at about 2 am he called again to tell me that he wasn't coming home at all and to go get my own cigarettes. By that hour there was only one place in town still open where I could buy some.
Now I don't drive, so I had to walk a few miles in the freezing cold to get to Wallgreens. The front register was down, so the manager handed me a pack of cigarettes ant told me to go pay for them at the pharmacy counter.
I have purchased my cigarettes at Wallgreens before and have never been carded. I am well over 18 years of age, and well over the age of manditory carding, which in my state is anyone under the age of 27. In fact, I was never carded for a cigarette purchase in my life till that night.
The pharmacist refused to sell me a pack of cigarettes without ID on the grounds that I looked under 40 to him. And he wasn't about to make an exception and wanted me to walk miles back home, get some ID and walk miles back and present it to him. Mind you it was like under 20F that night.
Rather than walking all the way back home and then all the way back, I decided to kill time and wander the aisles and do a bit of shopping. i figured if I killed enough time QuickCheck might be open when I decided to walk back home. And if they were I'd buy cigarettes and a nice hot cup of coffee to warm me up.
Well, It wasn't my night...
When I got to QuickCheck, they should have been open but weren't yet. Somebody decided not to show up for work, and it's their company policy not to open the store unless there are at least 2 employees on the premises. So i couldn't get my cigarettes...or a damn cup of coffee. And it was really cold.
I ended up 'killing time' there too...lol.
By the time I found a place open to buy a pack of cigarettes, it was 7 am and I was around the corner from my house.
Now some of you may say I wouldn't have gone through any of this if I didn't smoke, and I am not going to argue with you about that, and it's not the real point here. And you might even say I should have had ID on me any way even if I didn't think I was going to need it, but that isn't the point either.
The point is, if it is Walgreens policy to card anybody under 40,which differs from state law, it should have been enforced at all times...and some sort of sign somewhere stating that. If that had been the case, I would have been fully aware of their rules ages ago, and definately before I left home and would have brought my ID with me...or not bothered to leave my house till the store around the corner was open.
So now it looks like Tennesee will have manditory carding for all places that sell beer. They think carding 90 year olds will keep teens from buying beer. but since they aren't going to have manditory carding for places that don't sell beer, I think that teens will either get some adult to buy their beer like they do in NJ, or they will start switching to hard liquor & wine where thye have a better chance of not being carded.
Teens will get booze no matter what you do. If they want it bad enough they will find a way.
Take my dad for instance. He started drinking at a very young age. An age that nobody would have sold him anything...age 11.
So what did he do? He built his own still and made his own hooch. Where there is a will there is a way. You can't stop youth when they have made their minds up to destroy themselves. You have to intervene long before that. And I place that responsibility on parents and how they raise their children.
My own daughter, despite having friends that drank and got high, wasn't one of them that got involved in it...she was the anti-peer pressure of her group. With her around, not only was she not drinking, but she had the effect of slowing down thier self destruction and keeping them out of trouble. At least 2 of her friends quit smoking because of pressure from her. She had the nickname of 'Mom'. Other parents knew how she was and worried less about their kids if they were with her.
My daughter finally did start drinking...at age 19, and I don't see a problem with it since she technically an adult and out of school and doesn't drive. The age 21 law was enacted in order to cut down on teenage accidents as a result of drunk driving...which she can't do...and to keep kids from being drunk in school...which she can't do either.
I think if all parents raised their kids and taught them how to make decisions that were good for them, and taught their kids how to think, that the drinking age would never have been raised from 18 to 21 and manditory carding would be unnecessary.
Why is it countries like France don't have the problems we do in the US with alcohol? In France, kids drink wine with dinner...it's no big deal to them...no thrill to go booze it up. If something isn't 'forbidden fruit' it doesn't appeal to a rebellious teen looking to break the rules.
Take away the 'forbidden fruit' factor and a teen is going to have to really think hard to find something to rebel with. For my daughter, who was taught how to properly think, and to take responsibility for her actions, the 'forbidden fruit' was having a messy room...and wearing the most insane clothing combinations. (red & white polka dotted skirt with green & black striped tights and a flannel shirt and purple wig) OK, so she would have been arrested by the fashion police...but that's better than being arrested by the real police.
Maybe I missed my calling...maybe I should have been writing books on how to raise kids. But the parents that would need most to read them aren't the type that buy books on parenting.
Maybe I should write that book any way and sell it on lulu.com. Call it How to raise an intelligent, responsible child that won't make you want to rip your hair out. If I sell it for $5 a copy in .pdf format, would you buy it? If I get enough 'yes' responses, I'll write it. I really will.
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