Most stores sell non-pseudoephedrine versions of the same medications that usually have phenylephrine which does not require showing and tracking your ID. But anyone whose taken it know that phenylephrine is a poor substitute and barely acts as a decongestant.
Sounds like they could’ve done a better job explaining what was going on. But I imagine that as a pharmacist, “guy who’s mad he can’t buy pseudo anonymously” isn’t someone you have a lot of patience with.
If they're loud, obnoxious or stubborn about it (if they don't accept a reasonable explanation), that's obviously something else. I'm not talking about people being a dick. Just the general principle of taking that moment to explain the why rather than assuming anyone who doesn't immediately comply with a "hand over your ID for registration" order must have security called upon them as in the example above.
Full disclosure: I'm also this kind of person. Needed to authenticate myself to get a phone number (a regular phone number, both pre and post paid at different times so that's not the difference) at a local office. The person behind the register takes my ID, I figured she'd check and we'd be good, but then she puts both sides under some reader. I happen to know it's illegal to copy the national identifier code (BSN in Dutch) but I don't want to be obnoxious right? Not as if she's a lawyer, she's just doing what she's told to. So I just ask (politely, I thought, not stopping her or anything) which field(s) the machine copies. Well now did I want to let her do her job or should I find myself another carrier maybe? was the retort.
Hotels, similar thing. Photocopying an ID in that situation is illegal for the same reason. Employees get hostile faster than a tesla gets to 60, and I'm left feeling of a different generation before I'm even 30 years old. Anonymity is not an option, heck even complying with GDPR is not something one can expect, but refusing to even inform me what they're doing? That's off limits now?
If they want to control the sale of it then they can put it behind the counter or put a giant advisory sign nex tto it on the shelf. But they don't do that because it will hurt profits. I don't care about their problems with meth heads.
This is not just about the situation of buying one kind of cold medicine. I'm in my 50s, why should I need to present ID if I wish to buy a beer or attend a show? Sure, the answer is 'we have to minimize our liability' but the answer to that is not to violate everyone else's privacy and autonomy.
I'm an easygoing responsible person who doesn't do stupid shit. I'm just running out of patience with public and commercial entities handing me the metaphorical bill for every imaginable security issue. The USA has turned into a nation of paranoids where people are interrogated over things like nail clippers.
Smurfing is the practice of sending several people out to buy pseudoephedrine just a box or two at a time at a bunch of different stores. These federal id tracking requirements are an attempt to curb that.
Yes. Regulation can be BS too.
My mom (well over 21) tried to buy liquor, but was refused because a lack of ID. She sent me (also well over 21) to buy instead. At the register, I made a passive aggressive comment about how my mom was refused 30 mins ago. So they refused ME because they wanted to "ID all people at my party" - or something like that.
But this isn't specifically written into the law, i.e. the law doesn't say "you must check the ID of everyone in the group." Rather, it's that businesses receive ENORMOUS fines if they're caught selling alcohol to underage people - so most of them have very strict internal policies to minimise the chances of a false negative.
I would support a law that prohibits kids in a grocery store
I've lived abroad for sometime now and last time I went home to California to visit, I went to a restaurant to have a beer and dinner with my dad.
I've been gone for so long, I no longer have a drivers license or ID except for my passport, which I don't carry around with me.
I tried to order a beer and they refused. I was very upset as I'm 35 and obviously not a kid. I was just trying to have a beer and catch up with my dad.
Just a huge lack of sensibility in the US these days. They would never do this in 90% of the world. Unless of course you're obviously young.
This doesn't change your basic premise (the law is nuts), rather it extends it (the law is even more nuts than you expected).
Not to go all lawyer on you, but wouldn't be a good idea to see what the law actually says instead of making up reasons that might or might not exist? In CA the law is not really that onerous and just says it's a misdemeanor to sell to someone under 21. The only severe penalty is serving alcohol to someone who is a minor and already intoxicated (and thus that much more likely to do something stupid). But it's widely understand socially that any drunk person can be refused further alcohol at the discretion of the seller. But many commercial entities have just decided the way to cover themselves is just demand ID from everyone.
https://www.abc.ca.gov/education/licensee-education/laws-and...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoephedrine#Manufacture_of...
I'd perhaps prefer a world in which many drugs were legally sold, which might make this specific issue disappear but even then I'm happy that cigarettes and alcohol, and some other potentially dangerous items are age restricted.
“I need a license for my pet fish, Eric.”
I've never been asked for ID for either OTC or prescription medicine, and while I obviously need to present a passport to travel internationally, the airline doesn't need to see it. And all my recent travel has been domestic, and not needed ID.
(Since I turned 18, the government scheme for when to ask for ID for alcohol has ratcheted up from nothing to "Think 21" and on to "Think 25" so a younger me would probably have needed to show ID at least a bit. But I don't think that's entirely unreasonable)
Two, if you're old (which unfortunately I am) then your apparent age is enough anyway. I do not ordinarily carry ID. Nobody stops me buying alcohol, entering nightclubs, watching movies, or doing other age-restricted activities, because "This person is obviously like, fifty?" is enough.
Of course, for both the knife and the alcohol regulations, the law is around age. ID is merely the mechanism that everyone uses to validate age, as it's settled practice that doing so will prove the ID card holder's age sufficiently for the purpose of the legislation.
I've been refused for having expired ID, despite the picture very obviously being me, and my age very obviously being well over the legal age.
My wife's been refused because apparently her federally issued citizenship card, with a photo that showed she was well over age wasn't apparently good enough.
I actually remember one time when i was fairly young, early 20's, I'd let my license expire because I wasn't driving and couldn't be bothered to renew it at the time. I got refused at the liquor store and there was an old guy behind me. He just started ranting at the cashier about how I'm obviously legal age and how you don't need a license to drink and all this stuff. The cashier actually relented and sold it to me after, but that old guy's rant always stuck with me since.
And, it's made me notice how more and more, it's not even about how old you are, it doesn't seem to be about protecting minors, it just seems to be a way of training people to provide ID any time regardless of the reason.
What the store is doing is not preventing teens from buying Alcohol or Tobacco, it's simply covering its ass. There is a certain liability with certain transactions. In that case, the store covers. If it can't cover, it doesn't make the transaction as the liability is too high for whatever profit there is.
I left my purchase at the counter and went elsewhere to buy herbal teas.
Subsequent research suggests that few cold remedies are effective at all (though decongestants can improve breathing). Teas with slippery elm and eucalyptus seem at least somewhat effective, don't require IDs, and are not meth precursors.
On why / how older generations may be primed to object: I remember reading a science fiction story in the late 1970s / early 1980s, a short in a compilation (likey a Hugo or similar award collection), in which a data system with universal identification system, with one of the designers of the system being given the opportunity to opt out.
He does.
I think of that story often.
Revelation 13:16-18 New International Version
16 It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, 17 so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.
18 This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.
When we went to the restaurant to have breakfast, they adamantly refused to remove the clear plastic partition dividing the table in two.
We couldn’t move it to the side, we couldn’t move it anywhere else. It had to physically separate my wife and I. To what purpose, I have no clue.
Oh, we’re both vaccinated. But it is corporate policy, so nothing we (or the staff) can do, even though anyone with a brain could see that it was pointless.
If you think it's bad now, wait until they roll out vaccine passports.
Some advice you never asked for: in that situation, protesting often makes things worse. Learning a little bit of negotiation and sales is an invaluable investment in life.
A simple you seem concerned about selling this to the wrong people / I'm about to make your day a little bit more difficult / you probably think I'm being unreasonable / is it absolutely impossible for me to come home with the medication my wife expects me to? / I don't want you to do something you're uncomfortable with / how can I explain this to my wife? can go a long way.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/protest :
> the act of objecting or a gesture of disapproval
> a complaint, objection, or display of unwillingness usually to an idea or a course of action
On a more serious note, I wonder just how people end up with unpleasantness being the standard go-to behaviour when people behind the counter aren't just giving them what they want.
Surely at some point in their lives they must have noticed that being polite and pleasant is far more likely to get you what you want than acting like a dick?
Usually the guy behind the counter has no say on company policy, and going against it is very much not in their interest. They'll be even less inclined to breaking policy over someone that acts like an asshole
In general, I think it's unfair to ask a probably-underpaid cashier to break policy in this way -- they almost certainly have no control over the policy, and quite possibly face severe consequences if they acquiesce.
----
The probably-underpaid people who break policy make the world go around. We'd get nothing real done if people just followed policy all day long.
It might sound like I'm joking, but I don't. I have huge amounts of respect for those people, and obviously if they help me out I will do what I can to help them out. (Even if it's just paying it forward and breaking policy when necessary myself.)
I'm not anti-policy. I love good policy, and I rarely have reason to break it. The policy that often needs breaking is the bad policy.
Last winter my wife was ill with a cold. I stuck my credit card in my pocket and went to the drugstore to buy a box of Theraflu, an over-the counter decongestant. They wouldn't sell it to me without ID and when I protested this they grabbed the box and told me to get out of the store or they would call over their armed security guy. This was a corporate change, I had bought the same product many times before without ever being asked for ID.
People are forced to ask permission far more today than a few decades ago, and everyone is treated like a suspect if they object. I don't know who's more contemptible, the petty authoritarians or the people meekly giving up their privacy and dignity to get permission to engage in the most ordinary activities.