With everything else going on, I almost missed this one:
Indiana lawmakers have rolled back a much-disparaged law requiring everyone, regardless of age, to be carded when buying alcohol, but some retailers say they may keep up the practice anyway.
A new law that kicks into effect July 1 means store clerks selling carryout alcohol will no longer have to ask for proof of age from anyone who “reasonably” appears older than 40.
But some retailers say they won't be asking their employees to judge whether somebody's hit the magic “40” mark, and will tell them to keep carding everyone, no matter how old they appear.
“We've got 60 cashiers working for us and that means 60 different opinions about who looks like they're 40,” said Jerry Corliss, owner of the Chalet Party Shoppe liquor stores in Northwest Indiana. “We're going to keep carding everyone.”
If I owned a liquor store, I don't know that I'd card every old geezer who shuffled into the place. But I'd probably err on the side of caution and card anybody who looked under 30 (althlough that's getting to be a tougher and tougher call, if you know what I mean). How can a law based on such subjective judgment even be enforced, by the way? How do you define what "reasonably appears older than 40" means?
