WRITTEN ON June 7th, 2009 BY kiwivera AND STORED IN bucklame, kiwiland, politics
Tags: alcohol, auckland, law, new zealand
before i start, a couple of facts:
- i don’t think underage people should drink
- i agree with a law that tries to prevent underage people from having access to alcohol
- i agree that if the law says that if you’re under 25 you need to show your ID to buy alcohol, you definitely have to do it
having said that, i still think that what happened last saturday was completely ridiculous and an example of how sometimes, people trying to do good things can just go too far and make a mockery of the system.
c. and i went into a shop to buy a couple of bottles of wine. we picked our wines and headed to the counter. c. got his eftpos card out, ready to pay for the bottles. the lady behind the counter asks for ID and c. shows her his drivers license. the dialogue proceeds as follows:
lady behind the counter (looking at me) - where’s your ID?
kiwivera - i didn’t bring any with me.
lady behind the counter - well then i can’t sell you the wine.
c. - why not? she’s just keeping me company, i’m the customer and i’ve showed you my ID.
lady behind the counter (should i mention that she was wearing yellow nail polish or is that too distracting for you?) - i can’t sell you the wine because she’s got no ID and no one tells me you’re not buying the wine to give it to her.
c. - i could be here alone buying the wine to give to a five year old, as far as you’re concerned, and you’d have no idea!
lady behind the counter - yes, but you came with her and she’s got no ID.
kiwivera - that’s fine, i’ll just walk out of the store, wait outside and he can buy the wine.
lady behind the counter - too late for that, i already saw you walking in together.
c. - so how long am i supposed to be away from the store for before i’m allowed back in to buy wine by myself?
…
there were a couple of other funny lines in the dialogue but the lady finally gave in and sold us the wine (without me having to go home to get my ID and prove that i’m in fact a grownup woman, old enough to pay a fair bit of taxes and old enough to buy her own wine).
now, remembering all the bullet points above, i still find this situation completely ridiculous. we have confirmed that this is the law: an adult with ID cannot buy alcohol is he’s got someone else that appears to be under 25 without ID, even if the alcohol is for himself. He simply does not have that right.
Bearing in mind that parents are not allowed to leave children under 12 years old alone, imagine this: a mum goes out with her kid to do her shopping. she picks up her groceries, leaves the supermarket and then remembers she needs to buy a bottle of wine from the liquor shop across from the supermarket. does she break the law by leaving the kid alone to go buy the wine? does she break the law by trying to buy the wine with the kid? or does she crap all over the kioto protocol by driving home unnecessarily to drop off the kid to then go back to the store to buy the wine?
getting drunk is hard work.
</rant>
That is why i am against a law preventing people from buying alcohol. having said this law needs to be used in societies where people act positively as far as drinking is concerned.
Having something forbidden as a teenager is almost always a cause of concern because if you are young and you can’t have it you’ll try to have it. On the other hand, if those around you behave naturally and responsibly towards a specific thing then you have your positive model then and there. I would love to have some statistics on this but i am willing to bet that children from families who behave responsibly around wine but not making a big deal out of it grow up to not be binge drinkers whereas children from families who completely forbid wine or behave funny towards it will be more likely to be binge drinkers.
And i do miss the time when my dad found out he ran out of wine and because he was still cooking he would send me down to the supermarket next door to buy wine. Nobody flinched and nor did i. And i rarely drink alcohol now. My brother who has probably done the most shitty things in his young life has never had any problems with this. In fact, he never ever ever came home drunk.
I say responsible parents and society make responsible children. Laws cannot substitute this.