The Interim Study Committee on Alcoholic Beverage Issues has come out opposed to modifying the alcohol laws to allow Sunday sales. I don’t have time to provide any commentary, but the minutes from the hearing are here (pdf). O.k. – just a bit of commentary. The current laws seem like a protection scheme for the benefit of package stores with little benefit to the public.
All done “in the name of the Lord”
Again, Sunday sales (by the glass) were the first of the Blue laws to be repealed, thirty years ago. (Unless you count “No women on bar stools”, which lasted into the 60s.) So I’ll believe this is “all about the Freedom” when someone explains why Beer Baronage and hard liquor in grocery chains was more freedomy.
Or, for that matter, why it always takes ten years of “study” (see fireworks) before Hoosiers are ready for something which then becomes a retroactive right. I’ll believe this stuff is legit when either a) there’s an up-and-down vote on something similar that’s cleared up in a single session, or b) the ultimate decision goes against whoever had money on his side to begin with. I’ll also believe this is all about Freedom when I have freedom from the entrenched state distributors, and when out-of-state distributors have the right to sell in Indiana without being located here.
Which, I know, doesn’t hold much water if you’re happy with what selection the grocery store offers you, but if you drink wines that don’t come into the state by the truckload you may see the concentration of power in the hands of three grocery chains and the two liquor distributors who run the state as a threat, and your days of cellaring the wine of your choice replaced by finding out which restaurant gets favored treatment so you can pay 200% markup to drink something five years too young. Unless they’re keeping it for someone else.
Oh, man, fireworks! I still feel tainted by my work on fireworks legislation.
I’d like to see a more compelling interest involved, before they restrict people’s liberty – even to this admittedly small extent.
Willing buyer + willing seller + legal product = Sunday sales
If not, why not?
And Doghouse Riley brings up other ways where people’s liberty is constrained by entrenched interests. (And where I don’t see a particularly compelling interest).
I really don’t care one way or the other about Sunday sales, but I do think that it is the big box stores that will benefit most, as they are already open on Sundays.
What legislative work did you do on fireworks Doug?