As ludicrous as it might seem, if there is a financial penalty to pay (or if there is a threat of losing your trading licence) in the event vendors sell cigarettes or alcohol without checking ID, then I suppose it really is a matter of the law coming to direct conflict with common sense. Usually common sense prevails but if someone wants to implement the law they are not doing anything wrong.
About moving the forum to another country, not that I endorse that view but keeping that aside I should imagine it cannot be too difficult. The forum is not an LLC (that I know of) and websites can be hosted anywhere. I think the issue that regardless of where the forum is legally based, theymos does not want certain types of mixers being promoted.
Oh USA law is so fucked up complex , layered and contradictory it is amazing.
So asking theymos to do mixers would likely mean asking him to relocate to a far more liberal tax country. Just to run the forum. That may not be realistic at all for him.
You've got the first part right, 100%. I just saw a woman who was quite obviously in her 50s-60s get denied cigarettes at a gas station because she couldn't produce an ID. That's an example of law coming into direct conflict with common sense, and it's idiotic.
And moving the forum to an offshore country in order to preserve mixer campaigns? Yeah, there's no reason for that even if it were easy enough to do, which it isn't.