When I was a kid, a bunch of us would hang around outside a busy liquor store near a major road intersection. Traffic was brisk in the early evening and there always was an army of bums in the shadows at the edge of the store's parking lot. We would wait, looking for the right mark to go inside and buy beer or vodka for us.
Oh, we tried to rustle it up ourselves, but no matter how we tried we could not pass for 21. The ID we swiped from my buddy's big brother did not work, either. We'd get tripped up on, "What is your birth date?" or "That's funny, you don't look like your picture." We had no choice but to hire the job done. It did not take long to get the booze, pay our supplier enough for a bottle of his own and be on our merry way to a party or the beach.
It was a regular thing. Finding somebody to buy hooch for a bunch of teenagers for a few bucks was easy. It was a different time. Mind you, it was stupid on our part; criminal on theirs. The laws are tougher nowadays, but not much else has changed.
That does not keep good-hearted folks from continually trying almost anything to keep booze out of the wrong hands to save lives. I applaud them. The problem? When government and do-gooders join forces, the result can be disappointing. Take, for instance, the ordinance pending before the Anchorage Assembly and awaiting further legal review. It would require checking the IDs of anybody buying alcohol -- including older-than-21, law-abiding citizens, people who have done nothing to warrant what amounts to a government-mandated search.
Voters in an April advisory vote decided, 2-1, that the city should require all buyers of alcohol at liquor stores to show photo ID. The idea was to deter underage drinkers and the 486 or so people with red stripes on their driver's licenses and state identification cards indicating a judge has ordered they not buy liquor.
Somehow, that very clear vote evolved into two different measures in a deft bit of bait-and-switch by liberal Assembly members Dick Traini and Paul Honeman. One -- despite voters' approval of a narrow liquor store ID requirement -- was expanded to make the checks mandatory at restaurants, bars and liquor stores. The second is an evolution that would have the ID checks in liquor stores starting July 1, and in bars beginning in 2013. There is a third, by Assembly members Adam Trombley and Debbie Ossiander, that reflects voters' wishes.
We could argue about whether this proposed government intrusion will make us safer or is simply more smoke and mirrors designed to obscure our failure to deal with a chronic, perhaps insolvable, problem. Or, we could talk about it as part of the constant grooming seemingly aimed at getting us comfortable with the notion of producing identification on command and the idea of unquestioning response to government demands.
Instead, let's ask the pertinent question: Will it work? The answer is as obvious as a fly in a bottle of gin. It will not. It may slow down kids, who will find booze if they want it, but it will not deter someone addicted to alcohol. Think about it: Heroin is illegal and hard to get, yet addicts find ways to feed their addiction.
Then, there are the countless ways to dodge the proposed law. Passports do not have red stripes. News stories say judges do not even always order the stripes on driver's licenses or ID cards as part of a sentence. Federal ID? Military ID? Friends and relatives can buy booze when all else fails. On and on.
What we would end up with is an ordinance that inconveniences tens of thousands -- and unnecessarily intrudes on their privacy -- to deter only a few who have ample ways to circumvent the law the rest of us would have to obey. It is legislation cobbled together to address a problem with no clearly definable solution. Too often nowadays that passes for government success.
Instead of adding another layer of mandates and requirements and demands, instead of hectoring the law-abiding, we would be better off enforcing the laws already on the books -- and educating and treating those in need.
Anything else is a waste of time and effort.
Paul Jenkins is editor of the AnchorageDailyPlanet.com.
PAUL JENKINS
COMMENT