> When I go buy a beer at the gas station, all I do is show my ID to the cashier. They look at it to verify DOB and then that's it. No information is stored permanently in some database that's going to get hacked and leaked.

Beer, sure. But if you buy certain decongestants, they do log your ID. At least that's the case in Texas.

In PA they scan your ID if you buy beer. There could be a full digital record of all my beer purchases for past 15+ years, although I'm not aware of any aggregation of this data that is happening. Not that I expect anyone doing it would talk about it.

> But if you buy certain decongestants, they do log your ID.

Yeah, but many people don't actually think War on Drugs policies are a model for civil liberties that should be extended beyond that domain (or, in many cases, even tolerated in that domain.) That policy has been effective, I guess, in promoting the sales of alternative “decongestants” (that don't actually work), though it did little to curb use and harms from the drugs it was supposed to control by attacking supply.