Describe your state's asinine liquor laws.

[mr.jp]

@silenus

Can’t help you - I live in California, where you can buy vodka at grocery and convenience stores at 6am on Sundays and there are microbreweries frakking everywhere. We can mail-order wine, too. The only restriction I can think of is a prohibition on real Everclear.

But you can’t buy hard alcohol within a certain distance of colleges. At least I couldn’t at the Berkeley University. Had to drive away a little.

[OneCentStamp]

@rsat3acr

I’ve always thought that the age of majority is 18 but that one can’t buy alcohol until 21 is wrong. I know people claim it is to reduce drunk driving but that should be a separate enforcement issue, after all plenty of folks over 21 are driving drunk.

I agree, but back in the days when legal drinking age was determined by the individual states, it was all over the place: 18, 19, 21. When the Federal government standardized the drinking age, I’m sure they felt it the safest bet to standardize it to the most restrictive age. I can only imagine the backlash that would have happened if they had forced, say Idaho, to go from 21 to 18 and teen driving deaths skyrocketed.

Still lame, but understandable.

[Emtar_KronJonDerSohn]

@OneCentStamp

4. Same for the taps in bars and restaurants. No more than 4% ABV. Bottled beer can be higher.

What about the private club exception? In 2009 I got real beer on tap in a bar, they just required one person in our party to buy a $2 membership and invite the rest of us as guests.

@cochrane

In my state, Arizona, it actually is as simple as “Here, I have some booze to sell; you can buy it if you’re old enough.” Any place can sell beer, wine, and liquor. Want some booze while you’re grocery shopping? If you’re 21, it’s yours. Want to get a six pack at the convenience store? No problem. Liquor sales are permitted seven days a week any time except between 2:00 am and 6:00 am, including election days.

It’s not exactly that any place can sell beer wine and liquor, you still need a liquor license and can be refused a license by the city council at a license hearing or lose your license if your establishment becomes a nuisance or is the scene of multiple violent crimes. And there are different classes of licenses; beer and wine, spirits, on premise, and retail. There is a limit on how many drinks one person can have in front of them and you can’t serve, sell to, or have anyone in your licensed establishment who appears intoxicated. It’s much less restrictive than other states but not quite the wild wild west.

[twickster]

Moved Cafe Society --> IMHO.

[OneCentStamp]

@Emtar_KronJonDerSohn

What about the private club exception? In 2009 I got real beer on tap in a bar, they just required one person in our party to buy a $2 membership and invite the rest of us as guests.

The private club law is gone. Back in 2002 when the Winter Olympics were coming to Salt Lake City, the state realized that this was going to be an embarrassingly stupid law to have to explain and enforce to tens of thousands of visitors from all over the world.

[Wesley_Clark]

You can’t buy liquor on sunday, christmas or on election day. For those of us who stock up it isn’t a problem. but still.

I think they have a law where you can only buy 3 or so cases of beer or handles of liquor in one purchase. I think, I was told that which is weird because Kroger has sales where if you buy 6 handles of liquor you get 15% off.

Luckily they changed public intoxication laws recently in this state. It used to be just being drunk was all it took to get arrested for intoxication. Now you have to actually disturb the peace. So if you get drunk and just walk around you aren’t breaking laws.

[hogarth]

@Rysto

Beer sales in Ontario are messed up. In Ontario by law beer may only sold for off-site consumption at:

1. a brewery
2. an LCBO store, which mostly focuses on wine and spirits and has a very limited selection of beer.
3. The Beer Store

The Beer Store essentially has a monopoly on beer sales in Ontario, and it’s almost entirely owned by Coors and Budweiser (they own 49% each and a Japanese brewery holds a 2% stake).

You neglected to mention that there’s an exhaustive list of minimum beer and liquor prices that must be charged. Here’s an example as of 2010. In particular, beer must cost at least $29.35 per 24-bottle case.

[pulykamell]

@dalej42

Illinois is pretty much sane. Beer, wine, and liquor are sold in grocery stores, convenience stores, as well as private liquor stores. Bars are open until 2 am, with some open until 4 am (at least in Chicago). There’s an idiotic blue law which prohibits sales until 11 am Sunday morning, a combination of Black democrats and Southern Illinois white republicans are stubbornly refusing to change that.

Unless it’s changed, on Saturdays in Chicago you also get an extra hour (so 2 a.m. bars can stay open until 3 a.m., and 4 a.m. bars until 5 a.m.)

The only other prohibition I know is that alcohol sales are capped at 151 proof in the city of Chicago. You can get the 190 stuff in (at least some of) the suburbs, though.

[Iggy]

OK… outside the US here.

Welcome to the sunny Cayman Islands. Enjoy your vacation or cruise stop for the day. Just hope it isn’t election day.

Zero alcohol sales are permitted on Election Day until the polls close around 7pm. Not in hotel bars. Not in restaurants. Not to tourists or expats who cannot vote anyway. Not in duty free stores where the purchaser is immediately leaving the country with a sealed bottle. None.

In addition, the weirdness that becomes more apparent if you live here is that all alcohol is taxed very high (US$14.80 or more per liter of liquor, or US$2.44 per liter of beer) so no cheap beers or rum punch on the beach. Wine is a flat rate (US$4.50) per liter so if you were going to spend $50 on a nice bottle the tax doesn’t seem so bad.

And no alcohol sales are permitted in groceries. There is one gas station that can sell beer and wine - still not sure how they got licensed.

[Catamount]

What’s the deal with the “no alcohol sales on election day” rules? To cut down on drunk voting?

[Iggy]

@SpazCat

What’s the deal with the “no alcohol sales on election day” rules? To cut down on drunk voting?

Can’t even give it away for free here. Keeps the politicians from buying the vote of the town drunks with a few bottles of beer.

After all , anyone knows that a vote is worth at least a Christmas turkey and maybe even a washing machine if the race is close.

Still not convinced there is a mountain of shady money at the end of Cayman’s political rainbow? It’s common knowledge that some voters have been given washing machines, free home renovations, even had driveways paved leading up to past elections. Why? Why would candidates fork out so much money, so many goods and services in order to “serve the people” as an elected representative? It might be because they love the Cayman Islands, want to improve our schools, reduce crime and build up tourism. But it’s probably because they are aiming to use your votes for access to big bucks.

[John_Mace]

@silenus

Can’t help you - I live in California, where you can buy vodka at grocery and convenience stores at 6am on Sundays and there are microbreweries frakking everywhere. We can mail-order wine, too. The only restriction I can think of is a prohibition on real Everclear.

I live in CA, too. Have you ever tried to buy beer at Safeway after 2AM? Huh??? WTF, if I’m out of beer at 2AM and need some more!!

[Emtar_KronJonDerSohn]

@OneCentStamp

The private club law is gone. Back in 2002 when the Winter Olympics were coming to Salt Lake City, the state realized that this was going to be an embarrassingly stupid law to have to explain and enforce to tens of thousands of visitors from all over the world.

Jerks!

[UltraVires]

@John_Mace

I live in CA, too. Have you ever tried to buy beer at Safeway after 2AM? Huh??? WTF, if I’m out of beer at 2AM and need some more!!

I agree with these laws because, as you sarcastically noted, if it is after 2AM, it’s probably time to head off to bed and stop drinking. But not everyone has an 8 to 5 shift. If you are someone who does factory work from 4pm to 4am, these laws keep those people from grabbing a six pack on their way home.

Yes, they can make sure to buy ahead of time, but that same reasoning also defeat the logic that applies to Sunday and late night sales.

[dalej42]

@VarlosZ

There are probably some exceptions out there, but no state in the U.S. that I’m aware of keeps it is as simple as it should be when it comes to selling beer/wine/liquor. “Here, I have some booze to sell; you can buy it if you’re old enough” would be nice, but there’s always a catch or twelve, some weird set of rules that are arbitrary or archaic or rooted in influence peddling, and that make it less convenient (or more expensive) for people to buy alcohol

Nevada is the one state that does get it right, 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. If it wasn’t for the stupid highway funds, I imagine they’d let 18 year olds buy alcohol as well.

[RaftPeople]

@Smapti

…and the system it produced is now almost just as convoluted.

For consumers, the system is pretty simple and easy. I go to Safeway and buy alcohol.

I can’t tell you how happy I am that I don’t have to try to figure out where one of those damn state stores is and figure out if they are still open, which typically they were not (just due to when I would typically go shopping).

[RivkahChaya]

@DinoR

Sundays in Indiana you can’t buy alcohol… unless you go to a bar/restaurant and are getting it by the drink. (There is a microbrewery exemption at the brewery itself). You also can’t buy cold beer in bulk except at specifically licensed liquor stores (convenience stores, grocery stores, etc only stock warm beer).

Indiana is sillier than that. You cannot be chilled mixers (Coke, seltzer, Collins mix) in liquor stores. If you want cold Coke for your rum, you have to stop at a Walmart. Or a convenience store. You also have to be 21 to even step into a liquor store, but you can wheel your baby down the liquor aisle of a grocery store.

There’s a law about how much you can buy at once. I remember when we were buying cases of wine for our wedding, we had to go in and buy a case, walk it out to the car, lock it in the trunk, go in and buy another…

There’s a law that forbids anyone over 21 to be in a bar, even the bar area of a restaurant, even if there are tables, and food is served.

If you work at Walmart (or any grocery store), and are under 21, and a checker, you can’t scan booze, so if someone brings some to your line, you have to ask the customer to run the booze over the scanner-- after you check ID, of course. And employees are so paranoid that I still get asked for ID occasionally, and I’m 47. Apparently they get told to ask anyone who looks under 40 for ID. I get carded about 2 out of 5 times, so they are really being cautious, because I look every one of my years. I guess maybe sometimes when I’m in jeans and an old T-shirt, I could be a really haggard 30-year old. Gosh that 30-year-old needs to stop burning the candle at both ends. Show me your ID, then go get some sleep. And quit drinking.

There are dry counties in Indiana, and if you have booze in your car, even in the trunk, you’d better not drive through them.

A restaurant cannot get a liquor license if it is within 100 yards of a church. It doesn’t matter if the church is an Episcopal church that has wine at communion, and has wine and cheese receptions for visiting clergy, or open bars with hard liquor at weddings, or champagne breakfasts after the Easter Vigil. I had a good friend in high school and college who was an Episcopalian, and went to a church next to a Tibetan restaurant that couldn’t serve beer even while people were drinking rum and Coke at the church; she thought it was funny; I thought it was sad.

Indiana has had a 21-year-old drinking age forever, and Ohio used to be 18, so on the weekends, students used to drive to Ohio and get drunk, then sleep in their cars, and drive back, hung-over, slightly buzzed, and sleep-deprived. Every freaking weekend. I they weren’t driving at 6am on Sunday, there would have been more accidents than there were, and there were lots. Ohio finally tightened up its laws. Some college students think that being a college student confers some kind of right to get trashed as often as possible. Life in a college town in Indiana gets weird. Little 500 weekend in Bloomington means that Monday morning there will be about 500 students sitting outside the courthouse waiting for their hearing-- there’s not enough room inside. And those are just the ones who got caught.

[Smapti]

@RaftPeople

For consumers, the system is pretty simple and easy.

As a retail manager, I’m on the other side - I’m the one who gets all the yelling and hatred directed at them about why a $24.50 bottle of Grey Goose comes out to nearly $33 at the register.

On the plus side, I’ve gotten really good at calculating the tax in my head when I have to get bottles out for people late at night when we lock the liquor area.

[RaftPeople]

@Smapti

As a retail manager, I’m on the other side - I’m the one who gets all the yelling and hatred directed at them about why a $24.50 bottle of Grey Goose comes out to nearly $33 at the register.

On the plus side, I’ve gotten really good at calculating the tax in my head when I have to get bottles out for people late at night when we lock the liquor area.

I’m probably in a minority, I don’t drink enough to care how much it costs but I really am impatient and hate it when I want to go get something but I can’t due to some weird hours I have to work around.

[Suburban_Plankton]

@mr.jp

But you can’t buy hard alcohol within a certain distance of colleges. At least I couldn’t at the Berkeley University. Had to drive away a little.

I don’t think that’s a state law. There have always been at least a couple bars within spitting distance of Sac State.