ID-for-liquor law taken to extremes
“Papers, please!”
That chilling phrase is familiar from countless movies and TV shows set in Nazi Germany or the occupied lands during World War II. Or in Soviet Russia and the satellite states during the Cold War.
Or in fine New Mexico restaurants whenever a middle-aged person orders wine with dinner. Although, to be fair, our servers generally rephrase it along the lines of: “I just need to see your ID.”
We New Mexicans love to brag about how unique our state is. But when we boast about our many distinctions, we tend to omit this one: New Mexico is the only state in the nation where people are routinely carded into their 40s and beyond. People with kids in college aren’t regularly required to prove their adulthood anywhere else.
In 2006, my wife helped organize a weeklong summer master class at UNM taught by Trevor Wye, one of the biggest of bigwigs in the flute world, an Englishman whose books of flute pedagogy have sold in the millions. His Albuquerque class attracted top-level students from around the country.
One summer evening, he and a dozen students went to eat at one of Albuquerque’s better-known Nob Hill restaurants. Wye, born in 1935, ordered a cool refreshing beer. The server snapped, “Papers, please!” Or the equivalent.
Unfortunately, Wye hadn’t realized he needed to bring his passport to dinner. The manager was called over, but proved as firm as any border guard in a peaked cap. The restaurant would happily serve alcohol to students half a century younger than their teacher but, without his passport, the teacher would have to make do with ice water.
For a state whose economy depends so heavily on the hospitality industry, we are remarkably inhospitable to our middle-aged visitors. With regard to customers who are obviously older than 21, the carding ritual is as ridiculous as it is unfriendly.
But that’s not the only reason it’s so annoying. In your twenties, getting carded can be viewed as a rite of passage. Up until about age 35, you can pretend it’s a kind of flattery. But after that, the ritual forces you to think about the absurdity of anyone thinking you’re still young. Gee, thanks.
This past year, I tried to buy a bottle of wine at a grocery store. The checker demanded that I take my license out of my wallet’s clear plastic sleeve so she could closely examine the expiration date. Her concern, apparently, was that the moment my license expired, I would revert back to my teens.
As I complied, I felt like I was falling for a practical joke. She couldn’t be serious, could she? Apparently so, even though it’s been decades since anyone mistook me for a young person. As she handed back my license, I couldn’t stop myself from reflecting that, just as the glaring fluorescent light enabled me to see every imperfection in her face, she couldn’t possibly fail to notice the innumerable signs in my own face that I was much older than twice 21. And — would you believe it? — this train of thought had a dampening effect on my mood.
Which, presumably, is not something the store is eager for its checkers to induce in customers. “Come in for the fresh organic produce, stick around for the dismal reminder of your rapid decline!”
Other states control liquor sales to minors without requiring waiters and checkers to annoy and depress their customers. What makes New Mexico different?
Our Legislature, as you might have guessed. The Annoy and Depress Customers Act of 1981 was last revised in 1985. It’s currently codified as section 60-7B-5. It actually commands that licensees “shall refuse to sell or serve alcoholic beverages to any person who is unable to produce an identity card as evidence that he is twentyone years of age or older.”
New Mexico has an entire web of statutes and regulations providing fearsome penalties for selling to underage customers. Those statutes and regulations give business owners and servers every incentive to check the IDs of young-looking people. But 60-7B-5 isn’t one of them. It doesn’t prohibit underage sales. It prohibits uncarded sales. Peculiarly, however, the statute has no enforcement provision. There is no prescribed penalty for “failing” to demand an ID from a customer older than 21.
Giving the Legislature the benefit of the doubt, perhaps it meant the statute to apply only when the customer reasonably appears to be younger than 21. Maybe through absent-mindedness, it forgot to include those qualifying words when it drafted the statute. If so, it’s not too late to go back and put them in.
As it is, the statute serves no purpose. Demanding IDs of 71-year-old visiting Englishmen does nothing to curtail underage drinking. Nor does it address any other social ill, unless “forming pleasant memories of the Land of Enchantment” is counted among them.
The current law is a pain for customers, especially visitors from out of state who aren’t used to ritual harassment at the beginning of restaurant meals. But it isn’t good for businesses, either. It requires employees to waste time on a pointless task while generating ill will among customers. Lost sales extend beyond the refused glass of beer. It can mean
the loss of repeat patronage. I’ve never bought another bottle of wine from that grocery store, for instance. Who needs the hassle?
Which is a question we should all be asking every time another middle-aged or elderly customer is required to flash a driver’s license or passport to convince another server that, yes, damn you, I’m even older than your parents. Now get me that beer.