Nanny State

C. Jarrett Dieterle | 9.28.2024 7:00 AM

If you walk into a grocery store and pick up a six-pack of nonalcoholic beer, you might be caught off guard by an unexpected request to show your ID to the cashier. As a matter of inventory protocol, nonalcoholic beers are often categorized under similar stock-keeping unit (SKU) numbers as regular beer, which can result in a would-be buyer automatically getting carded at the register. But what might be an occasional, if annoying, quirk of modern retailing could soon become a government mandate.

Various "experts" are calling on state governments to impose age restrictions on the sale of nonalcoholic drinks, according to CNN. This is being pushed under the guise of protecting against underage alcohol consumption, based on the argument that products like nonalcoholic beer could be a gateway to the real thing. The reality is that imposing age restrictions on nonalcoholic beverages could actually result in more youth drinking, not less.

The experts quoted by CNN cite research surveys conducted abroad that supposedly show that youths who drink nonalcoholic beverages are more likely to also drink alcoholic beverages. One of the studies, for instance, polled Japanese adolescents and found consumption of nonalcoholic beverages........

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