Hoosiers for Beverage Choices is pressing for a change in Indiana’s laws that restrict alcohol sales on Sundays.
The goal of HBC is to update Indiana law to allow for:
1) The carry-out sale of alcoholic beverages on Sundays; and
2) The sale of cold beer at drug, grocery and convenience stores.
To paraphrase Lionel Hutz, “I don’t use the word ‘hero’ very often, but HBC is the greatest hero in American history.”
The Sunday alcohol thing is mystifying. If you want to buy beer on Sunday, you have to drive to a bar or restaurant. Yeah, I know, with a little planning, I can buy beer on Saturday and have some on Sunday. But I’m not “a very good planner.”
IC 7.1-3-1-14 establishes the legal time for sales. It’s legal to sell alcohol Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 3 a.m. (prevailing local time). On Sundays you can’t sell from 3 a.m. through the following Monday at 7 a.m.
Browsing through these statutes, I see that the whole crazy thing needs to be thrown in the trash and written from scratch. (For example, the following section advises us that it is legal to sell to someone who is sitting or standing and that it’s legal to drink while sitting or standing. Mighty liberal of them.) Reminds me of the fireworks statutes that were presumably written to be deliberately confusing for the benefit of particular constituencies. And I don’t say this gratuitously — by and large, the Indiana Code is written as directly as possible. But, there are certainly pockets that remain obstinately tangled. (Title 3 – Election Law also comes to mind.)
My favorite part about the ban on sales on Sunday is that (I assume) it has something to do with Christians.
So, what do two older Christian groups (Lutherans and Catholics) do on Sunday morning? Have wine.
Although, my guess is that the grape-juice drinkers would be the ones who are opposed to Sunday sales the most.
By the time they “imbibe” the wine, it’s become the Blood of Christ. There’s always a loophole.
By the way, alcohol was strictly forbidden duriung Lent in the Middle Ages, but the German monks renamed Beer “flowing bread” and kept right on enjoying a drink that was safer than regular water.
I agree Doug– let’s toast the HBC.
“Flowing bread” — I like that. We used to call them “hydraulic sandwiches.”
Jason’s on to it, sort of. The Prohibition and temperance movements were often intertwined with anti-Catholicism. Think ‘Catholic immigrant’ for the era of 1900 or so, and you’ll get Irish, Italian, & Polish. Even though the Germans brewed more beer than any of these and stood to suffer the most, the anti-alcohol movement was very Protestant, and had an undercurrent of anti-Catholicism.
Hoosier 1st,
You’re correct, but when they pour it into the cups, it is still wine. Isn’t that distribution?
Mike,
Good point. Reminds me of another line from “Blazing Saddles” (a souce of wisdom for me, since I don’t have the history background you do):
“Fine, we’ll give some land to the (bad afro-american name) and the (bad chineese-american name), but we DON’T WANT THE IRISH!”
Our liquor laws are completely corrupt. To operate as a bar, there are very clear laws about being required to be a restaurant that serves a very specific amount of food. How many bars do you know that couldn’t come up with a hot sandwich, soup, and soft drinks for 25 people at one time? There’s no such thing as a pure “bar” in Indiana. You must serve food in order to receive a license permitting on-site consumption of alcohol. One used to have to get a special permit to allow dancing as well. That has since changed.
Just sitting or standing?
What about folks that want to lay on their back open-mouthed and have beer poured in?
Doug, Ruth brands HBC as “those bold progressives” but if you check, I think you’ll find they’re a very savvy PR front for the pro-Sunday sales lobbists hired by Marsh, et al. I’ll check the cite but it was in the IBJ a few weeks ago.
Not that I’m not all for Sunday sales (although there are two sides to the coin) but HBC isn’t just a bunch of folks who banded together to say “go sales!”
Here’s the cite — actually, it was Mark Finch at Wine Canine who did the sleuthing. Check out all those lobbyists and PR firms behind Hoosiers for Beverage Choice.
http://winecanine.com/2008/07/group-campaigns-for-sunday-sales-cold.html
Braingirl said:
So, what is the other side of the coin? Not to sound dense but… I really can’t come up with any legitimate argument against groceries selling alcohol on Sundays.
And cars for that matter (well, not grocery stores selling cars… )
It’s not just about cold beer. Allowing carry out of package liquor means many liquor and wine stores would open on Sundays — the second highest volume sales day of the week.
While staffing the floor for Sundays wouldn’t kill, say, Kahn’s or 21st Amendment, it would be financial wash and in some cases a loss for smaller stores. Sure, they’d have to make decision to stay open or not, but if they don’t, there’s always the spectre of lost sales. Smart stores will want to schedule tastings and events on Sunday which means distributors would also be moving to a 7-day-a-week business model, a significant expense. For many wine reps and business owners in the industry in the industry, it means being on call on Sundays for both events and service issues. Does that seem like a big deal in the big scheme of things? Probably not to the average consumer who wants to pop in to Village Pantry for a cold six-pack of Coors Light, but for quite a few small businesses — fledging wine distributors, small wine shops, medium sized-liquor stores, it’s going to have a real bottom-line impact on their business.
The large beer/wine/liquor distributors have historically (and will continue to) spend significant money to fight a lot of the liquor law changes in Indiana and while I was against them 100% on the shipping issue, I have a lot of friends who own their own small businesses in this industry and I’m of two minds about this one.
I think each company has to make its own business decisions – we should not legislate their choice for them.
Flowers for example – is it fair that you can purchase flowers from a supermarket on Sunday? The poor Mom and Pop florists who have to decide to be open or not… clearly no one should be allowed to sell flowers on Sundays to protect them.