Can and box are real and sold in Canada.

Poster is AI slop. Either added into the image or made by the store. Budweiser wouldn't be promoting Corona, a competitor.

Rates of alcohol use and addiction have been decreasing.

This is just getting them started early like cigarettes always tried to do.

Ok, I did the digging on this because you asked. I actually just assumed because I was carded for NA beer that this was a law.

In the US, federally it is not illegal to sell less than 0.5% without carding. But many states treat NA beer the same as normal beer and they require the person be over 21. In the states that do not require 21 and over for NA beer many (most) stores and bars will still card because its better safe than sorry when it comes to ABC and losing your license.

So even tho it might be legal, you are probably still going to get carded, except at this place I guess.

But also I am struggling to understand why someone would choose to drink NA beer if they didn't already know what real beer was like and was trying to avoid it by getting the NA kind (like me). Like - NA beer costs the same as real beer, just buy literally anything else to drink and its cheaper.

The real reason is you don't. Not in every state. Some defined it by a strict measurable standard. Others defined it to close off what's depicted in this image. Others defined it to describe what was banned as oppressed to what you measure, so that if you're selling beer you can't sell it to kids. No checking labels, no "well, it's my home brew so I don't know". Is it beer? You can't sell it to kids.

The last one is almost funny because you can almost feel the confusion about why the concept of non-alcoholic beer even exists.

The same reason why vapes are considered "tobacco products" despite not containing any tobacco and considered "flavored" if they contain any flavor (or no flavor) besides "tobacco" flavor (which is actually just caramel flavoring since vape juice has no flavor by default). It's because politicians are stupid and short sighted and most of these regulations make little sense outside of government control.

Fruit juice naturally has around 0.5% alcohol. It's just a side effect of wet sugar.

There's no legal federal limit, it's all state law. Some states go by that 0.5%. others go by a definition that includes "things sold as beer" essentially.
"You are holding a container. It is labeled beer. Do not give it to anyone under 21.”

Other times stores just assume and card everyone because it's waaay easier than nuance and you're not legally required to sell non-alcoholic beverages to minors.

They say “contains less than 0.5%” because that’s the cutoff that makes something legally beer. It more than likely has none, much of the time. That’s just the law (US):

> 0.5% it’s beer and subject to alcohol laws

< 0.5% it’s not beer, technically a soda or something

So they label it as <0.5% simply to show that it’s in the latter category. This creates a lot of confusion for some reason. Hell, half the brands don’t have required nutritional info (beer doesn’t need it, soda does) but the real problem is that:

The regulatory agencies are captured and don’t do shit anymore. TECHNICALLY the FDA should be stepping in and making them put full nutritional information on all the brands of NA “beer” and making sure it is labeled and sold like a food. But they don’t.

Counter example: kombucha has naturally occurring alcohol, but you don’t see anyone getting carded for it and you have the regular nutritional label on it.