So, I was in Tennessee some years ago, and the motel I was staying at was in a dry county:mad: And I’ve always wondered, how do they stay that way? During election time, doesn’t someone run for County Commisioner (or County Clerk, or whatever they call the head cheese there) under a campaign of “I’ll do away with prohibition”. Or does that happen and he loses? Why do those places stay dry? Is everyone in the county a Bible thumper or what? I would go nuts in a dry county. What’s going on there. What are the politics of it all?
there are two reasons that dry counties stay dry----
preachers and bootleggers
I know that Westerville, Ohio, is still dry mainly because the National Temprance Society (or somesuch) was founded there in the 1800’s. All the local kids drive 5 miles into Columbus to party in the neighborhood near Ohio State where I used to live. Of course, they probably would no matter what. High Street was a blast.
The town I lived in in Kentucky 20+ years ago was dry. Still is. The usual reasons given are pretty much religious ones (as in ‘we’re going to turn our town into another Sodom or Gomorrah if we pass this’). Never mind that their kids are driving 20 miles to the nearest town w/ alcohol, drinking it and driving back… on twisting, turning Ky backroads. Looking good to Jesus is more important to them than the lives of their young people.
I don’t know about Tennessee for sure, but here in Ohio, the ‘dry or wet’ question is generally up to the voters, and not some elected official. In any case, like most such things, it’s all about politics and money.
In southern Ohio, and I’m sure in many other places, it pays to know what township you’re in within a county, since liquor availability varies from one township to the next. I used to live in Porter Township in Scioto County, which was dry, as were Bloom and Vernon Townships, and most others. Within the same county though, Portsmouth (city) and New Boston (village) were wet, as were Morgan and Clay Townships.
I’m stuck in a dry county. Periodically, the “Wet versus Dry” thing comes up at election time. The preachers get all their congregations to vote against going wet. They’re helped by the “private” clubs who can serve alcohol for some reason. And, of course, all the bars and liquor stores just a couple feet over the county line throw a lot of money around to make sure that our county stays dry . . . it’s better for their business that way.
Only in Protestant America. That’s one of the ways they keep out Catholics.
Pious Envy.
According to the CDC (check out the “comprehensive data” section), 21% of Americans are Lifetime Abstainers.
An additional 15% are Former Drinkers, and another 15% are Infrequent Drinkers.
That adds up to 51% of the total U.S. population that isn’t all that concerned about being able to purchase alcohol in their county.
When you realize that these stats are for the entire country, and that some counties are much more heavily skewed toward Abstainers, it’s not hard to understand why the electorate in some places may vote dry.
Just because this 51% isn’t worried about their own selves being able to purchase alcohol doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t think other’s don’t have the right to purchase. They do have beliefs in freedom (or lack thereof) one way or another, surely?
I don’t smoke marijuana, but I would vote to legalize it, for example.
True enough. However, I often encounter the attitude expressed by the OP:
The implication being that barring religious prohibitions, access to alcohol is a high priority for most people. The truth is that for most people this is a non-issue. Sure, some of them might vote “wet” based on the freedoms of others, but they wouldn’t care enough to get the issue put on the ballot in the first place. Given the tendency to keep the status quo in place, the people who like it dry because they’re benefiting in some way are going to win out over those who want a change.
I grew up in a dry town in upstate New York. Never once did I hear a religious argument against going wet, probably because the religious leaders were all great swillers. The argument against it was purely economic. The town never had a local police force, and the thought was that if the town went wet, the bar brawls and such would require that we form one (which costs money). But why the zoning board didn’t simply disallow bars to be built, I don’t know. Rarely do you see grocery store brawls around the beer cooler. In any case, it was no great hardship for most of us to buy our booze in the next town.
They may have had something in that argument. There was (of course) a bar in the next town, just over the town line. One day I bought a newspaper and read that the shooting early in the night at that bar was completely unrelated to the pistol-whipping in the parking lot later in the night. How reassuring.
Oh sure, freedom is important. But we can’t allow you to be so free that you do the wrong thing.
So we are going to prevent you from buying and consuming alcohol because we are protecting your morals.
So don’t be mad. Be grateful. How about a nice soft drink while I read you a soothing Psalm?
:):)
Have A Nice Day! :):)
Of course, discontinuities in liquor laws always lead to that time-honored tradition of the bar run or the beer run.
(Cue up “Making the Run to Gladewater” by Michelle Shocked)
When I grew up, PA wasn’t dry, but it WAS a 21 drinking age at time when the states on all sides around it were 18.
About an hour to the New York border …
If you don’t make things convenient for the drunks locally, you’ve just got them on the highway.
Hey, Musicat, according to your profile you’re from Wisconsin, **“The Drunkest Place on Earth”**tm.
Can you imagine the fuss here if some county went dry?
Yabob wrote:
When I grew up, PA wasn’t dry, but it WAS a 21 drinking age at time when the states on all sides around it were 18.
About an hour to the New York border …
If you don’t make things convenient for the drunks locally, you’ve just got them on the highway.
That’s exactly what happened here when the drinking age was 18 and the age in Illinois was 21. There were so many crashes at the boarder it was unbelievable. The answer would have been for them to lower their age instead of us raising ours. But it didn’t work out that way.
As an Ohioian exiled in Tennessee, I can tell you the dry county bit here is all based on religion, with some pretty strange effects. One thing most people don’t know is that Tennessee had prohibition statewide long before the admendment was passed in the US Constitution. This, of course, made lots of money for the bootleggers who raced throughout the state delivering their illegal hooch (its how NASCAR got started, after prohibition was repealed, the bootleggers began racing their cars for sport instead of trying to outrun the local law). Jack Daniel’s is made in this state in a dry county :eek: which I find hysterical as most people don’t know that and think that they’ll be able to buy the stuff at the distillery. But even in the “wet” counties you can have some pretty screwy laws. For example, you can’t sell wine in a grocery store, which means if you’re planning a romantic dinner for two, you have to make another stop, instead of snagging everything at one place. And in some places, you can have a bar that sells beer, wine, and liquor by the drink, but you can’t have a restaraunt that does! Also, none of the wine coolers sold here are really made with wine, they’re made with beer (otherwise they’d have to be sold at a liquor store)! Back before the Feds blackmailed everyone into raising the drinking age to 21, you could, in parts of Tennessee, be 18 and buy a drink in a bar, but couldn’t buy it from a store until you were 21! Figure that one out!
In New Albany, Ohio, where I grew up, the town was dry until I got to high school, then things started to change (of course, the fact that they were bulldozing most of the town and replacing it with million $ homes might have something to do with that).
Gallatin, the town I live in (where men are men and their younger female relatives are nervous:eek: ), here in TN allows liquor by the drink, which means they’re now started to get some nicer places to eat, while the neighboring town of Hendersonville (which is home to many more wealthier people) doesn’t, so its chock full of McDonald’s and other fast food places and if someone wants a decent meal they have to either go here, or to another nearby town that does.
If a county’s wet or dry, or some mixture there of, is generally determined by a voter referendum, which is bloody hard to get put on the ballot in this state. Right now, the state’s budgetary shortfall is less than the money that Tennesseans spend on Kentucky State Lottery tickets, TN doesn’t have a lottery, and can’t get an initiative on the ballot because of a few old farts in the statehouse who are totally opposed to such things. They’re solution? A state income tax! Let’s see here, I already pay over 8% sales tax on everything I buy (food, clothing, included, which most states either exempt or tax at a much lower rate) and they want to saddle me with an income tax, so my pathetic little paycheck will drop to almost zero since you know they won’t bother to cut the sales tax if they get the income tax passed.
But hey! It is legal to marry your second cousin here and you can marry a minor of almost any age, provided you have his/her parents permission! And we do have a giant fiberglass statue of the founder of the KKK along one of our highways here, plus the annual Klan march/protest. I tell ya, ya gotta love it!