Comment by aleph_minus_one

> If ID checks are fully anonymous (as many here propose when the topic comes up) then every kid will just have their friends’ older sibling ID verify their account one afternoon.

Exactly the same way that kids used in former days to get cigarettes or alcohol: simply ask a friend or a sibling.

By the way: the owners of the "well-known" beverage shops made their own rules, which were in some sense more strict, but in other ways less strict than the laws:

For example some small shop in Germany sold beverages with little alcohol to basically everybody who did not look suspicious, but was insanely strict on selling cigarettes: even if the buyer was sufficiently old (which was in doubt strictly checked), the owner made serious attempts to refuse selling cigarettes if he had the slightest suspicion that the cigarettes were actually bought for some younger person. In other words: if you attempted to buy cigarettes, you were treated like a suspect if the owner knew that you had younger friends (and the owner knew this very well).