ME: Maine Makes National ID Checking App Available To On-Premises Alcohol Sellers
By Nora Flaherty
December 11, 2018
Many restaurants, bars and clubs in Maine will soon have another tool at their disposal to prevent serving alcohol to people under 21.
The state Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages and Lottery Operations says it will make an app called Age ID available to 150 on-premises licensees.
BABLO’s deputy director Tim Poulin says Age ID will help verify whether an ID is authentic, and will work in venues that don’t have a central cash register.
“Because it was mobile — you didn’t have to have anything but a mobile phone or an iPad or whatever to use the application,” he says.
Age ID taps into a national database of drivers licenses and IDs to determine whether someone’s identification is real. Poulin says it can also check whether an ID is being used inappropriately — for example, if a group of people is passing a single ID around and using it repeatedly.
Poulin says it is now very easy to get a high-quality fake ID on the internet, and that as part of this program, the bureau will begin requiring the use of Age ID by some licensees who’ve been cited for selling alcohol to minors.
“Those on-premises establishments that have failed, and been cited for selling to a minor, will as part of our process to get them to be compliant, will be required to use this free service for a year so they don’t sell to minors again,” he says.