NYS just did a ‘nice’ thing with their blue laws. Previously (like a month ago) wine and liquor stores could not be open at all on Sunday, most inconvenient if you wanted to pick up a bottle of wine on your way to a dinner party.
Now, they can be open on Sunday, just as long as they close down on a different day during the week…
The laws regarding alcohol purchasing and consumption are just the most confusing, inconsistent and ridiculous laws this country has. Every municipality has it’s own individual laws cocking up the works, if you travel, you never know what the actual laws are.
IIRC, Pennsylvania has a finite number of liquor licenses, the licenses that bars and restaurants must have in order to sell. If I wanted to open a pub, I’d have to wait until another bar or restaurant closed down!
meathead, your local college sounds insane. What the hell are they thinking? I’ve lived in two small Pa. college towns. Each one had half a dozen bars right in the heart of downtown (downtown- so to speak), within walking distance of the campus and the rented apartments and houses where most of the student body lived. It worked out beautifully. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night, there were crowds of people safely walking to and from the bar. Young people could socialize…and not be tempted to drive drunk.
And these college-town bars were the best at checking IDs. The students under 21 were still relegated to parties if they wanted to drink.
I’ve read this thread and thought back what it would mean to my university days had the drinking age here (UK) been 21 rather than 18. It would certainly have been less interesting.
The hall that I lived in had a bar in it’s JCR ( Junior Common Room ) which I used to work on. Got quite good at making cocktails towards the end.
We certainly drank hard though, the student union used to boast that it sold 15 million pints of bear each year making it the largest sinlge outlet in in the north of England.
Hehe, first post after months of lurking - the alcohol drew me out. Though these days I hardly drink at all.
True, and the drive-thru windows have been shut down for several years now. Probably a good thing in this state; lots of uninsured motorists and lots of drunk drivers.
meathead: Just curious but do you live near St. Vincent’s by any chance?
They have a ‘dry town’ thing there too, and although Rolling Rock is brewed in that ‘dry town’ (Latrobe), the Rolling Rock Festival always has to be held somewhere else in order to be legal.
Seems kinda stupid to force the college kids to drive out of town to get drunk when they could much more safely get their buzz on within walking (or crawling) distance of home.
Hell, Massachusetts doesn’t even trust their own state to verify age correctly! I turned 21 in March, and went to pick up a bottle of vodka last month…the lady examined, scrutinized, and all but called the RMV for verification. She finally said she didn’t feel comfortable serving me, and sent me to another counter to be rung up, where the guy there had no problem whatsoever accepting my ID. I’ve had the same license since I moved here from Florida at 17, so I have the whole “Junior Operator until 3/14/00” and “Under 21 intil 3/14/03” and about 3 change of address stickers on the back. I still have another year until my license expires, but I’m about ready to cave and get a replacement early, just because I’m tired of the hassle.
And I went through the same driver’s ed thing when I moved here…Florida apparently doesn’t have the same driver’s ed standards, because while I got waived from having to take the course again, they failed my first 3 road tests on technicalities. It’s a conspiricy.
I don’t get it. Why make “drive thru” liquor stores illegal?
What’s the difference whether somebody in his car goes up to a drive in, or if somebody parks outside the store in their car, rushes in, buys liquor, and then brings it into his car?
Perhaps, but wouldn’t increasing penalties for drunken driving also have a preventative effect… it will punish the wrong doers, not just young adults who want to drink and not drive anywhere.
Nope. I’m talking about a small private Christian school by the name of Grove City College. Of course a lot of kids just travel down the road to party at Slippery Rock University.
Oh yeah, Grove City. I forgot that it’s also a dry town.
I was just by there recently when visiting a friend in Sharon. I do agree with you though, be much safer for them to drink at a bar on campus and walk home than it would be to drink at SRU and then drive home.
Not quite. What they don’t tell you is that crashes amoung young drivers also went down during the same time in Canada, where the drinking age stayed the same (18-19). It’s only a coincidence that the drinking age went up at the same time as traffic accidents went down.
I’m curious, I know there are some Dopers (many perhaps?) who feel that Marijuana is far more benign than alcohol. However it seems to be the general sentiment that these laws concerning alcohol are draconian and archaic.
Aren’t the laws out there to save lives? Aren’t drunk teen drivers a significant percentage of fatality-related accidents?
Mr2001–interesting article. I’m saving the link for future reference and my lit review.
Still, it seems that whether the studies were correct in the cause-effect relationship of the minimum drinking age and traffic crashes or not, it was enough for people to wave it in the air and say they had reason to get all states to institute a MLDA of 21.
The question is whether a minimum purchase age of 21 is the best way, or even an effective way, of reducing drunk driving accidents.
Suppose we lowered the drinking age and raised the driving age, the way it’s done in many other countries, so that new drivers were already familiar with the effects of alcohol and had gotten over the novelty. Don’t you think illegal driving would be less of an issue (less common and easier to catch) than illegal drinking is now?
