Alcohol & Drugs: MIP, MIC, Intoxication Illegal to touch bottle?

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azlkl

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I am in ALabama. The law says anyone under 18 must be with a parent to enter a liquor store. My 18 year old daughter was with me yesterday and came into the store with me since it was hot outside and gasoline is too high to leave the SUV running for air conditioning. We walked to the back and I saw what I needed on the very bottom shelf. My daughter being helpful bent down and picked the bottle up for me. She handed it to me and I walked to the front to pay for it. The cashier wanted her ID. I explained I was buying it, not her. He claimed that he couldn't sell it to me because she touched it! He said there was a law that said she couldn't touch the bottle. I can't find such a law. He had to admit she was legally in the store because she was with a parent. She was very upset and crying because she thought she had done something wrong. We have 14 year olds who can bag beer and wine here in the grocery so this doesn't make sense, does it?
 
What happened there probably is that this guy got over-cautious which I can understand because of the way some laws are written.

It is in many states there is a law that the liquor store owner must not sell to a minor or, and here it comes, to a person he believes will give the liquor to a minor. Since it looked to him that the minor here chose the liquor he might have thought that the liquor was actually for her and therefore he was not allowed to sell it even if an adult was there, too.

Since cops love to use these kinds of situations for sting operations I can understand if the clerk was over-cautious.
 
It is also possible that it was store policy. There is no law saying that they have to sell you the alcohol so they are free to add additional restrictions if they feel it appropriate.
 
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