Atlas Obscura:
If you think that Prohibition is a thing of the past, think again. There are a surprising number of places in the U.S. where the sale and consumption of alcohol is still illegal.
While Prohibition was repealed in 1933, many municipalities opted to keep the ban in place. Thirty-three states allow for localities to prohibit the sale of alcohol, and in some cases consumption and possession. Kansas, Tennessee and Mississippi are dry states by default and require individual counties to opt in to sell alcohol.
When I lived in the Southern US, I always found it weirdly quaint, but annoying nonetheless, how many places had prohibitions on the sale and service of alcohol. The best example is Lynchburg, Tennessee, the home of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey. You can’t drink Jack Daniel’s in the place where it’s distilled.
Ridiculous, church-based holdovers from a previous century.
Between my state, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, looks like we have most of the red to ourselves. Take that, you sinners!
I can’t wait to get out of this state. And probably the country.
“The best example is Lynchburg, Tennessee, the home of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey. You can’t drink Jack Daniel’s in the place where it’s distilled.”
The state, or at least the city, shouldn’t be allowed to take any taxes from Jack Daniels then.
After all, it’s Satan’s brew!
We don’t want the good people of the city of Lynchburg going to hell for participating, do we?
Your bigotry is showing. I live in a state that has “dry” and “wet” municipalities. Crime is higher in the wet municipalities. But store revenue is higher.
There is also this, from a link in the article:
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/01/04/local-alcohol-prohibition-laws-may-lead-to-less-liquor-but-more-meth-economists-say/
One of many reasons why these issues are not so cut and dry, no pun intended.
Things are not so simple.
Where do blue laws come from? What institutions initially sought to control all behavior of their populations, if it wasn’t the big government bogeyman?
Fine, then. Let’s ban everything that overtly contributes to crime, violence, or accidental death.
It’s not just that. The list of silly concepts to patronize people is never-ending. Every time I visit the US, I don’t really know, if it is laughable or sad.
Drinking beer from brown paper bags (while you can be as bright as a slice of toast and walk around with a gun)? The fact that you can get killed in other countries for pocket money, before you can legally drink, smoke or fuck? The great bars that allow you to drink only inside and smoke only outside? States like South Carolina, that only serve liquor in mini-bottles (aircraft style) – because our landfills should tell our story?
My all-time favorite was a flight from Seattle to LA in the late 1980s though. “Flight attendants will now collect all alcoholic drinks since we are about to enter Utah airspace.”
Until a few years ago you couldn’t buy alcohol on Sundays in NYC. That really sucked because weekends were the only time I’d cook nice meals and have some wine with dinner, you forget to buy some wine on Saturday, you’re screwed… Seemed totally ridiculous in a city like New York, but the one argument I liked was from the store owners. If even one place remained open, they would all have to stay open to compete, and they liked having a day off…
And @thecappy:disqus, you’re completely clueless if you think the laws weren’t based on religion when they were put on the books. Even the term “Blue Law” comes from puritan times. So do a little thinking before throwing around inflammatory names like “bigot”. @disqus_jSdqm19kwy:disqus hit the nail on the head.
get out…
i lived in Minnesota when the bars closed at 1AM — yet only minutes away in Wisconsin they remained opened until 2AM. as you can imagine when the MN bars closed students would drive over to WI for that added hour. there was a very high-profile car crash where the kids accidentally drove themselves into the river and all died. (and then their parents sued each other, alas).
so to apply the “for the children” trope — if extending drinking hours saves just one life…is it not worth it?!
hey dude? “correlation does not imply causation”. durr. too many other variables.
The map is incomplete, there should be a color for counties where alcohol sales on Sunday is banned.
The bigger issue between MN and WI was that WI had a lower drinking age.
There’s one weird street in Melbourne( Victoria, au not Florida!), where the east side of the road is .dry” and there’s been a constant battle between the restranteurs and the liquor licensing board, churches, local council and residents. It is so ridiculous as you can have a good meal on one side, then walk across the street to a club or bar.. So stupid!
First, blue laws != prohibition. I lived through blue laws in my childhood and found them arbitrary, inconsistent, and annoying. You’re a bit on the incoherent side (again). Did you slip “the big-government bogeyman” for any particular reason. It wasn’t that which gave rise to the blue laws, of course. It was a product of a very conservative religious age. They were instituted before my time, but I get the impression that they were put in place as a sort of compromise. There was a time when stores weren’t open on Sundays. Then these chains arrived and wanted to be open. So the blue laws were put in place to say, “Okay, but only the necessities, like food.” After awhile, people objected to the laws and they were removed from the books.
Society makes decisions all the time about behaviors that need to be regulated, restricted, or permitted. The Left regulates to excess. The Right regulates too. Theoretically, the Right regulates and restricts less, since it purports to believe in limited government, In practice, though, politicians from both sides of the aisle tend to the same mindset: trying to pass laws that sculpt the political landscape to a shape more amenable to them. Partisans invariably view the other party as being the ones who love to legislate to excess, partly because laws we agree with are less visible to us that those we disagree with. But it was the Left that produced the political systems about which the joke came: “Everything is banned, which is not compulsory.”