"Can I see your ID, sweetheart?"
Posted on 04/09/2005 12:45:35 PM PDT by Dan from Michigan
Bill would card anyone buying booze
GENESEE COUNTY
THE FLINT JOURNAL FIRST EDITION
Saturday, April 09, 2005
By Marjory Raymer
Thinking of a glass of merlot? Get out your ID, no matter how many gray hairs and crows feet you've got.
A proposed state law would require all drinkers to show identification every time they buy alcohol.
What's more, anyone convicted of driving while intoxicated or impaired would get licenses in the same vertical format that are designed to prevent teen drivers from buying alcohol.
It is part of an attempt by state Rep. John Stahl, R-Arcadia Twp., to ban convicted drunken drivers from buying alcohol for at least a year.
To enforce it, though, bartenders and servers would have to verify a customers' status on every visit, even if they're a regular.
"I would hate it," said Kim Locker, a bartender at the White Horse Tavern in Flint.
Locker said she regularly peeks at drinkers' driver's licenses, but it seems like overkill to have to card regulars she knows on a first-name basis.
"If someone had a bunch of convictions, that's one thing," said Locker, noting offenders already face fines, community service and jail time. "They are adults."
Stahl said carding everyone is a minor inconvenience that he believes could save lives and maybe even help alcoholics get on the road to recovery.
"It'll take five seconds. She could card 10 people in a minute," he said. "This is not going to stop (drunken driving), but it is going to slow it. If it saves one life, it's worth it."
Stahl admits this cause is personal for him.
Three years ago, a repeat drunken driver going 55 mph rear-ended a stopped car with his son, expectant daughter-in-law and grandson inside. His son suffered permanent neck damage.
"It's miraculous they weren't killed," Stahl said. "It could have been a tragedy. That really inspired (the legislation)."
Stahl said he specifically wants to go after repeat offenders and expects the bill to be changed so that first offenders face a 30-day to one-year ban, based on the judge's discretion.
It's the second time Stahl's made his pitch and the trio of bills in the package were the first he personally introduced this session. He's also signed on 18 co-sponsors and can officially label it a bipartisan effort with four Democrats in the mix.
It faces some opposition, though, including from the Michigan Restaurant Association.
The association "is fully supportive of efforts to reduce drunk driving, but in ways that don't target the social drinker and target responsible servers," said Andy Deloney, director of public affairs for the association.
"These bills go in the wrong direction and don't address the real root of the problem."
Deloney noted that Stahl's bills don't actually ban convicted drunken drivers from drinking - just buying alcohol. So, under the bill, convicted drunken drivers still could be at a bar drinking as long as their friends buy for them.
The secretary of state's office, which issues driver's licenses, also is not supporting the bill.
Spokeswoman Kelly Chesney said Stahl's proposal would be difficult to implement, cost significant dollars and change the original intent of the vertical licenses, which still are being phased in for younger drivers.
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About the bills
A person would be banned from buying alcohol if convicted of operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated or impaired driving. The ban would be for up to one year after the first offense, two years for second offenses and five years for subsequent offenses.
If an underage drinker is convicted of drunken driving, the time penalty begins on his or her 21st birthday.
Everyone buying alcohol would have to show identification, regardless of age.
The proposals are House Bills 4416-18.
Started with marijuana, then cigarettes, now liquor. How many freepers think its the responsibility of the government to protect you from your vices?
MADD= Mothers Against Drunk Drivers
DAMM= Drunks Against Mad Mothers.
"Can I see your ID, sweetheart?"
Better safe than sorry! The guy you carded last time as 70 might have time-warped back to 19, despite continued presence of gray hair, crow's feet, and the rest of it.
(rolls eyeballs)
Ah the old canard - "If it saves one life it will be worth it."
Nobody wants drunk drivers on the road. But this is getting silly already. Gvt, get the hell out of my business. Opps, just saw it, its NY.
Some years ago for a few months our local supermarket in Connecticut made us show ID to buy beer, now matter how old we obviously were. Evidently the police or some lawyer must have given them trouble. Eventually they stopped doing it, probably after driving their customers away or driving them mad.
This kind of things isn't the smartest way for politicians to win votes.
I don't drink but I bought some pre Chrisatmas liquor and I was carded. It was store policy and I don't have a problem with that. If it was state law I would.
I'll be 60 in June but don't look a day older than 59 1/2
So, get a state ID rather than a license.
While I'm sorry for what happened to his son, this man has apparently too much time on his hands.
I just love it when legislators use their power to promote pet causes.
Meanwhile, Michigan has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, businesses are closing shop and leaving this ever more stupid state, and young people are escaping to more friendly environments in other states.
Anyway, let's spend $100 million to build Jenny's bureaucrat-approved "cool cities," and let's not forget to give a big "okey-dokey" to the communist governor's Marxist land use plan so unelected soviet socialist planning councils can tell us how to use our property.
It started with Absinthe (many countries still ban it) and prohibition movements against alcohol followed.
Cocaine, morphine, and marijuana seemed late to the banned items list.
Revenuers have always found money in taxing alcohol. The power to tax is the power to control (and destroy). Legalizing hard or soft drugs at this point would only expand the powers of the ATF and move the DEA under their wing.
Meanwhile I got rear ended a couple weeks ago, lost my 7 year old (purchased new) car and have a sore neck as a result. This happened at 10am on a Saturday as a housewife drove the family SUV around, not paying attention. She may have been on a cell phone at the time but the issue was not raised and police did not even write her a ticket (we had to fill out our own paperwork for $6k+ in damage).
We are going to card every one who wants to buy booze, including my 81 year old Father.
However, we can't ask for anyone's ID to vote????
The real goal is to force bartenders to eye over the customers more and to be held liable if someone gets drunk at the bar (they are not to be overserved). Wonder if they will cut off "multiple" drink sales and require everyone to leave the table to stand at the bar when "buying a round".
I have no problem if they actually blame the drinkers for buying the stuff. Working as a cashier however, we are put in a spot having to sell the stuff- if someone fools us, or we don't happen to think they LOOK 27 or under (and therefore need to be carded) we can get in trouble for not carding - or if a parent comes in and buys some coolers and happens to have a minor along (buying groceries etc..) - the store and parents and we can get in trouble (fined and fired) for 'selling to/buying for a minor' if the teenager puts the bag into the cart or pushes the cart outside. It's utterly ridiculous.
So many of us cashiers have resorted to just carding everyone because we're not about to get fined for an error in judgement on something so subjective.
Asking for IDs to vote would "intimidate" people. People who don't have any concerns when asked for ID to buy alcohol, write a check, cash a check, pick up a package at the post office, get on an airplane, enter a 21+ business (bar, dance club, comedy club, nudie bar...).
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