It's a washing powder. Quite intoxicating, I should say. You don't want to eat it

Hahaha...
Yes...
Well kids will do whatever the latest fad is.
Sigh...remember back in the day the worst fad was the Pepsi Challenge?
Now we have kids dying doing the Tide Pod Challenge.
What madness is it ? Who in their sane mind thinks it a good idea to consume detergent? For kicks and a dare?
Mad. Mad mad world.
And if someone can find a way to make Soma from earwax and bellybutton lint...
They will...
And then the Powers that Be ...
will mandatorily cork our ears and belly buttons to make sure drug components can't be harvested.

As is alcohol in supermarkets around the world.

The point is, you do have non-food products in grocery stores.
Yet you do not have products that are clearly food, albeit somewhat intoxicating.
Consistency? What's that?

Besides, the aforementioned Vancouver store was not a "grocery store". It was a "supermarket". Four stories high, IIRC. You could buy anything there, from maple syrup to snow boots.
Only not a can of beer.

And they looked at me like I was some kind of criminal when I asked. Instead of explaining the situation and directing me to the nearest specialized shop.

Another country that seems to have a problem with alcohol is Finland.
There you do have beer in supermarkets, but nothing stronger.
You would feel quite at home there, endso

Ah...you call such stores "supermarkets" eh?
Here they are called big box stores...now...
They used to be the general all purpose stores of the past...
There aren't many single stores left that consume multiple floors of a building...
Just a handfull of those left.
But here "grocery" and "supermarket" is primarily food oriented.

Beer is great ...but I drink it rarely.
Only on the hottest of days of the year..do I consider it
And hard liquor only on the coldest of days...and Christmas ...for my rum and eggnog.
Otherwise I am a coffee drinker, tea drinker...and only what I make at home....
I don't care for the convenience coffee or teas.

Interesting. The first time I heard the term "big box store" was from your post #6600. The first image that popped in my mind was of what I would call "cash & carry", where you literally buy stuff in big boxes. Not a place where you pop down on the way home from work to buy a pack of Doritos, a bottle of milk and a tube of toothpaste. And a six-pack of Hen, of course. To go with the Doritos

Yup...
We still have what used to be termed the "5 and dime" stores...that carried a little bit of everything ..
Though there are not many of them left.
The grocery / supermarkets that deal in foods.
The general purpose such as Sears (pretty much gone now) Hudson Bay Company, Eatons (gone as well)
That consume multiple floors...(you went to one such in Vancouver..as you said...) and there are only a handful of those flagships left in canada that consumed whole storied buildings.
Convenience stores everywhere. On every corner....(well not quite...no municipalities would allow that.)
And lastly the big box stores..
Which uniformly everyone here seems to hate.
They call them that due to the "aesthetically pleasing box architecture " ��
The fact they build them on the edge of town also doesnt help.
They drive small businesses to ruin.
Impoverish people who have no choice but to work at them. Few enjoy going in them.
A tolerated evil.
Hell...most avoid them if possible.
It has been 5 years? More I think...since I was last in such a store.

The big box stores we have can cater to every whim.
One mammoth big box store for golfing....or for pets.....another for books...or hardware goods...another for arts and crafts supplies .or general "one stop shopping" ...
There are also big box grocery stores too....
All of them hideous sterile huge places, with staff that so obviously don't want to be there...aisles so long ...places so big that it is tiring trying to find what one wants....lighting and colour schemes to drive one out as fast as possible...and line ups of people at checkouts ..so long...one immediately questions why one came in the first place.
Personally...
I hate the places

Ahh, that explains it. I thought the name came from selling stuff in big boxes.

I agree the term "supermarket" is somewhat ambiguous. When I stayed at a hotel in Cairo and was directed to a "supermarket" across the street I was expecting something like this:



What I found instead was this: