Bar owners back higher drinking age but want mandatory ID checks

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

For some young drinkers, the dif­fer­ence be­tween hav­ing a drink legal­ly and il­le­gal­ly could soon come down to one thing: whether they can prove their age.

The Bar­keep­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (BOATT) sup­ports rais­ing the le­gal drink­ing age from 18 to 21, how­ev­er, it is warn­ing that with­out manda­to­ry iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in pub­lic, the pro­posed change could sim­ply push younger drinkers out of li­censed bars and in­to the streets and oth­er places where al­co­hol is sold il­le­gal­ly.

BOATT pres­i­dent Sateesh Moonasar said the as­so­ci­a­tion un­der­stands the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion be­hind the pro­posed change and ac­cepts that bars will lose some busi­ness.

“We are not against or op­posed to the Gov­ern­ment chang­ing the age from 18 to 21,” he said.

Leg­is­la­tion rais­ing the min­i­mum age for al­co­hol and to­bac­co from 18 to 21, and for cannabis and gam­bling from 18 to 25, is ex­pect­ed to be in­tro­duced in Par­lia­ment to­day.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced the pro­pos­al in a so­cial me­dia post on Mon­day, say­ing it is in­tend­ed to pro­tect young peo­ple from sub­stance abuse, ad­dic­tion and risky be­hav­iour. The Bill will amend sev­er­al laws gov­ern­ing al­co­hol, to­bac­co, cannabis and gam­bling.

But Moonasar’s main con­cern is en­force­ment. He ar­gued that if peo­ple are not re­quired to car­ry iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in pub­lic, po­lice would have dif­fi­cul­ty de­ter­min­ing whether some­one drink­ing in pub­lic is over 21.

He warned that younger drinkers could in­stead gath­er out­side su­per­mar­kets, shops and par­lours that sell al­co­hol il­le­gal­ly, while li­censed bars would be left car­ry­ing the bur­den of check­ing cus­tomers’ iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

“With­out the manda­to­ry use of ID in pub­lic, this law mov­ing the age of 18 to 21 is just mov­ing that pool of cus­tomers out in­to the gen­er­al pub­lic,” he said.

Moonasar said the re­quire­ment was nec­es­sary for the pro­posed change to work.

“But that is the on­ly way that this will be fea­si­ble be­cause if you’re stand­ing on the side of the road, how does an of­fi­cer dif­fer­en­ti­ate what your age is if you’re be­tween 18 and 21. If you’re above 21 years of age and if it’s not manda­to­ry for you to car­ry an ID, you’re putting a job un­der the TTPS that they wouldn’t be able to han­dle.”

On gam­bling, Moonasar said ma­chines in bars are clas­si­fied as amuse­ment ma­chines rather than gam­bling ma­chines. He be­lieves the pro­posed gam­bling age of 25 would ap­ply to casi­nos and mem­bers’ clubs, while bars would fall un­der the age of 21. He ac­knowl­edged, how­ev­er, that he had not yet seen the Bill’s text.

Moonasar al­so said BOATT was not con­sult­ed be­fore the pro­pos­al was an­nounced.

“From my as­so­ci­a­tion’s stand­point, no, we were not con­sult­ed con­cern­ing this. There was nev­er any top­ic or any dis­cus­sion with us con­cern­ing this.”

The pro­posed age in­crease al­so comes as bars face high­er op­er­at­ing costs. The 2025/26 bud­get in­creased cus­toms du­ties on rum, spir­its, beer and to­bac­co, while sev­er­al bars and restau­rants closed their doors in Jan­u­ary. Moonasar said the tax in­creas­es had al­ready re­sult­ed in some clo­sures, al­though not on a large scale.

“But this part with the age, I don’t think that it would af­fect busi­ness­es in any dras­tic way that would force any clo­sures or loss of em­ploy­ment.”