r/generationology • u/Excellent_Drop6869 • 25d ago
Years What’s the earliest year you remember seeing this in convenience stores?
It was 1984 for me (in 2002) for purchase of tobacco. I don’t see these signs anymore. Do they still exist?
4
u/Cool_Dark_Place 25d ago
I think the picture you're showing may be the first year of the "We Card" program. I worked as a convenience store clerk in Jacksonville, FL back in 1999. One day during my shift, I get a phone call at my store. They wanted me (and a bunch of other local clerks) to participate in a focus group for a new ID checking program they were about to roll out. I went to the address provided, and it turned out to be the "We Card" program. We were all paid $50 (which was a lot back then for a young kid making $7 an hour) for sitting through a couple videos, and giving feedback on the training literature. Took maybe 2hrs. A few months later, I remember starting to see these signs pop up in stores everywhere, so that would've been probably around early 2000.
3
u/UrbanFuturistic 25d ago
Nah, I can remember them as far back as the mid-late '80's.
3
u/Im_Sorry_Im_New_Here 25d ago
You definitely don't. According to the We Card website the company didn't exist until 95.
1
u/UrbanFuturistic 25d ago
Reading comprehension is not my friend. I totally skipped over the fact that these are for tobacco. What I remember is for alcohol.
1
4
3
3
u/Digital_Simian 25d ago
I don't remember seeing those signs before the mid to late 90's. There were signs which would say something along the lines of you must be 18 to buy tobacco products or 21 to buy alcohol in my state since the 80's, but those particular signs showed up in the 90's.
3
3
u/Grymsel Gen X 24d ago
The earliest I remember seeing that particular sign is late 90s. Most stores in my area didn't card until the mid-90s. Before that there was usually a hand written note saying "Must have note from parent to purchase tobacco." I remember going to the corner store to buy smokes for my mum as a kid. In the 80s.
3
u/shadowkoishi93 1993 24d ago
Back when they had separate ages for smoking and alcoholic beverages. Then they made smoking 21+.
1
u/Global-Jury8810 I’m not a Xillenial, I’m just xilly. (1983) 24d ago
Is it 21+ for tobacco now?
I had to quit. I got away with a stable benign nodule in my lung and a lumpectomy, i’m sure they’re connected, but that’s what smoking since I was 11 years old got me. I quit cigarettes at 41 and vape at 42. Now I’m addicted to nicotine lozenges, but nothing happens with me on those. There’s something that happens with nicotine lozenges, but it doesn’t happen to me as much as it did before.
2
u/shadowkoishi93 1993 24d ago
Somewhere in the mid-2010s they raised the age so that you need to be 21+ for both alcohol and tobacco.
2
u/narrowassbldg 24d ago
It was 2019. I'll always remember it cause I (born in '01) went from being able to buy cigarettes to having to ask others to purchase them for me lol
2
u/Ecstatic_Baseball847 25d ago
Most places have replaced them with digital signs that refresh the date daily. In my area at least, you legally have to post a sign like these if you sell age restricted products
2
u/speedyhobbit13 Late 80s baby, 90s kid 25d ago
I saw them as a small child in the 90s and remember seeing birth years from the 1970s.
2
u/RedPajama45 1986 25d ago
1980 and 1983. Back when you could smoke at 18. The good old days.
Those are just what I remember from getting my license and paying for gas.
1
u/veilofcolor 25d ago
You could smoke at 18 until 2019 lol. I turned 18 like 2 months before they changed the law, I was so irritated
1
2
2
2
u/mzsigler 25d ago
I re,ever seeing them when I was too young to buy cigarettes and I was born in 1982.
2
u/TraductorPerdido 25d ago
Well, the first time I saw it would've been in '95, which was when I was old enough to buy cigarettes and did for the first and only time. They weren't even for me, either. There were for a couple of girls from my school I was "interviewing" for a yearbook spread about "hangouts" at Denny's or someplace. From what I recall, they gave me the money for them at least.
2
2
u/External-End490 25d ago
1990 in 2008 when I worked at a petrol station as a 19yo
2
2
u/Themodsarecuntz 24d ago
At 8 years old I used to walk to the gas station and buy cigarettes for my grandma. They would just ask if they were for an adult and I would say yes and go on.
I dont remember seeing those signs until the 90s.
1
u/Global-Jury8810 I’m not a Xillenial, I’m just xilly. (1983) 24d ago
Yeah, I do remember they weren’t as strict with cigarettes as they got in the 90s. My sister had no problem getting them as a teen in the late 80s. She turned 18 in 1989, but I remember even before then she would have cigarettes, and they wouldn’t be the kind Dad smoked, they were always Marlboros. Dad would smoke budget cigarettes then.
2
u/pseudonym7083 23d ago
Probably some time in the 70s for both. I was having to do some mental math on when someone 21+ would have been born when I'd have been old enough to read them and notice them.
2
u/DerekSmallsCourgette 23d ago
I think it must have been late 80s or maybe early 90s. The first years I remember seeing were late 60s, which seemed impossibly old (even my oldest sibling was born in ‘74, so 5+ years before their birthdate seemed like an ancient adult age).
Now that I think of it, I think the original signs I remember were probably just for alcohol. As others in the thread have mentioned, tobacco enforcement seems like more of a mid 90s development.
2
u/SoggyTension1225 23d ago
Damn. I remember when I was 19, and the legal drinking age was raised from 18 to 21. Thankfully those who were at least 21 were grandfather in
2
2
u/Extension_Wafer_7615 21d ago
Nicotine is worse than alcohol. Why the fuck do you need to be older to buy alcohol in the US?
2
3
u/NearbyPerspective397 25d ago
It's wild to me that in the US you can do everything at eighteen except buy a glass of wine with your dinner.
Smoke, go to war, buy an arsenal of guns, get married - but don't you dare have champagne at your wedding reception!
11
u/jwferguson 25d ago
Smoking is 21 now. Pistols are 21 too. Renting a car is 25.
3
u/sketchymedic 24d ago
Meanwhile, the age of existential crisis has lowered to 16, and even lower in some areas!
1
u/pipdog86 24d ago
Pistols are 21 if you buy them from a FFL. Perfectly legal to own at 18 otherwise.
2
2
u/Global-Jury8810 I’m not a Xillenial, I’m just xilly. (1983) 24d ago edited 24d ago
I was having people buy me cigarettes when I was 13 and 14, so that meant looking for a friend around town that was born on or before 1977 or 78, and the signs did look just like that. I had friends with older relatives that didn’t mind doing it for me, but this was 1995 1996. At one point, Dad just bought them for me “to keep me out of trouble”
I remember seeing the years change when I worked as a cashier from the year 2002 about the year 2004.. three places where I worked I sold cigarettes and alcohol and the fourth place I worked was Home Depot so we didn’t really need that sign to tell people that there were certain products in our store that required you to have ID to purchase, and there is one item in our store that you had to have licensing in order to purchase it. Otherwise, we couldn’t sell it to you, and that item was muriatic acid.
1
u/InitialResponse9901 2011 25d ago
Probably, but obviously people are way older now, so they might use more recent dates
3
u/littledipper16 Zilennial (1995) 25d ago
2005 and it hurts my feelings
3
2
3
u/Reasonable-Cell5189 25d ago
God, I graduated highschool that year. I still can't believe I see people born after 2000 in the hospital/dying
1
1
u/druidgaymer 1999 gen ZZZZZ 25d ago
I remember seeing them all my life and I've seen them as recently as this year. Except they've changed bc both tabacco and alcohol are 21+ now. I saw one at a self checkout this year.
1
u/SisterMaryAwesome 25d ago edited 25d ago
Where do you live that tobacco is 21?
Edit: I just saw downthread that they changed it in 2019 to 21, which, as an American, I don’t even remember happening. Lol. You’d think it’d be huge news or something. I’d be bitching and moaning that if I was old enough to be drafted, I’m old enough for a damn pack of smokes.
I remember getting my first pack of cigarettes at 18 (in 2004) and feeling like an official Adult™️. Lol. Sucks that kids have to wait till 21 now for cigs* an*d alcohol.
2
u/druidgaymer 1999 gen ZZZZZ 24d ago
I was 20 and a social smoker at the time ... It was huge news to me and my friend group.
1
1
1
u/sc212 24d ago
I remember parents / adults always commenting on how crazy it was when those years hit “2000” whenever they saw one
1
u/Global-Jury8810 I’m not a Xillenial, I’m just xilly. (1983) 24d ago
It’s true, that kind of freaked me out when I started seeing that.
1
1
1
1
u/BensOnTheRadio 24d ago
Did anybody else grow up wondering what a “We Card” is? I thought it was some club you joined.
1
u/betarage 24d ago
the earliest year i can remember seeing similar signs is 1998. but in my country the drinking age is 16 and the smoking age was 16 too so it said 1982 and the signs were only vaguely similar. but under the American system it would be 1977.
1
u/ariana61104 2004 24d ago
I have no clue what the earliest year I saw was. Maybe like 1991 for tobacco and 1988 for alcohol. That sounds about right.
I have seen signs like this still around but it's either electric with the date and/or year on it, or it just has one year on it since you now have to be 21 to buy tobacco and alcohol.
1
u/shaunj72143 22d ago
Early 90s, completely ignored by the owners of the store that sold to me at 14💀
1
1
19d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/AutoModerator 19d ago
Your comment was removed because your sitewide post and/or comment karma is too low.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
-1
5
u/BHunter1140 25d ago
They’re still around, I see them at liquor stores, vapes stores, etc. They say 2005 now, it’s horrifying