There have been huge debates over the past ten years in my hometown of Jonesboro, AR over the sale of liquor. Jonesboro has a population of about 60,000 and if you count the neighboring cities and suburbs the population rises well over 100,000. Jonesboro is seated in Craighead County in Northeast Arkansas. Craighead County is "dry" and has been "dry" since 1976, when people voted to change it from its "wet" status. However, business owners can apply to the Alcoholic Beverage Committee (ABC) for what is called a private liquor license where you can serve alcoholic drinks in your establishment. These are rarely approved (we only have 11 right now). The debate has come over again because an Italian restaurant, named Piero's, has applied for one of these licenses and has been met with some stiff resistance, mostly from the churches and churchgoers around here. You can read many of the letters they send to the local press here at The Jonesboro Sun I'm totally in favor of allowing this permit to be passed as well as making the whole damn county wet. I mean we have a large population as well as the second largest university in Arkansas (Arkansas State University) yet there is basically no upscale/good place for people to go eat, there is no nightlife for the college students, and a very large chunk of money is spent in bordering counties on alcohol so we lose out on that revenue. There have been attempts at letting some good place come to town such as Chili's, Red Lobster, and Applebee's yet all have failed because owners wish to serve liquor. We do have some restaurants with bars in town. The local Outback has a bar that serves O'Douls, the O'Charley's here serves smoothies at their bar, and oh we have a Ruby Tuesday that serves ice cream and milkshakes at their bar. Am I missing something? I know there are some setbacks to making a county wet but everything has its negative side. I'm in favor of it, totally. I think it would be beneficial to our community more than hurting it. So I'm getting the opinions of the BBS faithful, what are your thoughts on liquors sales and what not? What good could I point out to people who oppose the sales? Is it really all that bad?
Personally, I think the idea of a "dry" county is utterly ridiculous. But I also respect a local community setting their own standards.
See that's thing, give me some reasons why you think it's ridiculous. Also I forgot to mention, the state has made it to where if we wanted to get the item (dry/wet county) on the ballots we would have to come up with 30,000+ signatures of registered voters within the county to do so. That's almost half the population of the county!
it's hard for me as a resident of the 4th largest county in the country to be real objective on this. maybe in a smaller county there could be better arguments. but in a largely urban county, i don't think it's even a question.
Being dry but allowing private liquor licenses is highly questionable. I would suspect that the pro-dry people in your county do not support these licenses. It really should be an either-or proposition.
I was surprised at the same thing. If they allow one establishment to serve liquor, the county isn't dry anymore. And, it seems like a very unfair thing to hand these out at the discretion of a board (unless there are measurable guidelines, like feet from a school); it would give the handful of licensed establishments an unfair advantage in the marketplace over those that were denied licenses. On the other side of the coin, I think the fact that you have a large university there is a good reason to keep the place dry.
case study: Lubbock, TX the city is dry, but getting a license to serve drinks in a bar/resturant is easy and there are hundreds of places to get a drink in Lubbock you have to drive outside the city limits to buy package alcohol though how does this cut down on the evils of alcohol? no clue! guess they don't mind you spending money in town drinking, but drinking in your own home? your going to hell!
I never understood the common practice in Texas of making an area "dry" but then making it very easy for restaurants to get around these rules through things like the Unicard or whatever.
Wow -- half of the population?! For a LOCAL ballot initiative? That certainly favors the status quo. As for the issue of dry/wet counties, I don't think it's the government's place to tell an adult what they can or cannot put in their bodies. I understand what they're going for (less alcohol consumption), but beer, wine coolers and wine have alcohol in them, too. And restaurants have no problem using giant loopholes to sell liquor. It's very inconsistent, and there seems to be no long-lasting positive effect (that I can tell). I'd be very interested to learn about dry/wet county comparisons on tax revenue, DWIs and DUIs.
Exactly! I believe the more you forbid something that is readily available the more people want and will do it.
Chicago had similar problems even though Illinois is not a control state. Often removing or denying a liquor license meant that restaurants would go out of business and all it would take was an irritated neighbor to complain to the board and hold a "local meeting" (generally unpublicized). Some of the arguements against having a dry county: 1. It makes it very difficult for restaurants to meet their overhead, often they eventually go under. 2. There are a number of other ways to reduce some of alcohol on the community such as stiffer penalties for serving alcohol to minors, drunk driving, etc. 3. Dry counties can create black markets for alcohol. 4. It is difficult to promote responsible drinking habits if the whole subject is taboo. 5. I'm generally against legalism. By which I mean holding people to a higher moral standard than God prescribes. Many people will disagree about whether the Bible prohibits drinking but from my understanding of the Greek terms used in the New Testament it would be a stretch to assume that Jesus turned water into non-alcoholic grape juice. 6. Point 5 really only applies within the church and it is probably fair to assume that not everyone in the county is a member of the same church. Consequently, it seems somewhat appropriate to apply a different moral standard to society as a whole. As all standards are based on something, I am not ruling out a mostly Christian community using a Christian standard but some sorts of actions and standards clearly apply only to Christians. For example, it should be a law that everyone get baptized and take communion.
I would add that allowing liquor licenses in a dry county on a discretionary basis is an invitation for corruption. Being a councilman who can decide who gets to serve liquor becomes a salable commodity. Maybe they're all too honest to take bribes, but the window is opened.
