sorry, i have a boring post about the news but this was really interesting to me

you see, the south carolina constitution only allows for the law to prevent 18-20 year olds from BUYING alcohol.

but once  they have it in their hands, there’s nothing you can do to stop them from drinking it.

probably the most enlightened thing i’ve heard on the subject in a while:

In a statement, McCulloch says the ruling “presents to the General Assembly and ultimately to the voters of South Carolina an opportunity to address the issue of under-21 access to alcoholic beverages in a thoughtful and deliberate way.”

“The constitutional decision to allow 18 year olds a vast array of freedoms, including the ability to fight for our country, suggests that the privilege of alcohol consumption as well should be extended to our citizens who are 18 years old and above,” McCulloch writes.

He says lawmakers, if they revisit the issue, should “look beyond criminalization and resist calls from the pressure groups opposed to alcohol to more productive solutions like education and counselors.”

full story – http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=10726099

of course, i’m sure someone here is running afoul of the law – whoever purchased the alcohol in order to give it to the 18 year old is probably violating something or other – but at least the 18 year old isn’t actually breaking the law by drinking.

so a couple months ago i got a speeding ticket. i elected to take the driver improvement test online to cut down my fine and also keep the points off my record.

the test has a huge section about DUI and how bad it is, which is completely irrelevant since i wasn’t drunk. but i guess they have to drill this shit into you regardless, just to be sure you’re aware.

the test was full of the usual “one drink makes you a drunk driver” rhetoric which is bullshit, but to be expected from an official government-sanctioned driving test.

there are plenty of other tidbits in this lesson book that go beyond “don’t drink and drive” though, and go right into “don’t drink”. take for instance the following paragraph, which alternates between demonizing drunk driving and demonizing drinking in general:

IS DRINKING FUN?

Where does one get the idea we must drink to have fun? Maybe somebody told them they were having fun and since they can’t remember what they did, they believe that they had fun. I believe that television plays a big part in making us think we must drink to have fun. Think about the last beer commercial that had real people (not frogs, or dogs or something else) in it. Now what were the people doing? You’re right, they were having fun, playing ball, bowling in the snow, etc. By the way, have you ever seen any commercials without beautiful people in them? I never have. Who are these commercials trying to reach? Is it our youth? Now, have you ever seen a commercial like this? A good looking man comes on and looks you in the eye and says, “be a modern-day man and drink A B C beer,” then he pauses for a second and finishes the sentence by saying, “Take your car out and kill a friend.” I suggest you will not hear the last statement, but you only have to read the newspaper to find that statement almost everyday. Do we have reasons to drink, or are they just excuses? Can you agree with me that the DECISION to drive after drinking is not a good one? Remember that EVERY CHOICE HAS A CONSEQUENCE. Good choices bring good consequences; bad choices bring bad consequences. Bad choices in 2004 killed 1,093 people in Florida. As we continue to drink, other parts of the body will slow down and eventually stop if enough alcohol is consumed. You can literally drink yourself to death in one sitting!

i can literally drink myself to death in one sitting, so…… don’t drink and drive? i guess?

anyway, this test did such a good job at conflating these two issues that it’s hard to hide the prohibitionist tendencies behind it.

i also like the logic in this section:

Presumption of impairment is .08 BAC. The reason for such a presumption is because everybody reacts to alcohol differently. Some individuals can be the same sex, height, weight, have the same amount of alcohol and one individual can be visibly far more impaired than the other, while the other could recite the Gettysburg address. This may seem unfair but it is the law. A line has been drawn to which everybody must adhere.

so… “everybody reacts to alcohol differently”, therefore, everyone should be subject to the same arbitrary BAC number. frankly, if someone can recite the gettysburg address, they can drive. BAC be damned.

it’s unfair but it’s the law! at least the state admits that the law is unfair, that’s pretty refreshing.

California is working on passing a state law that would specifically ban alcohol on one specific river, the American river in Sacramento.

Why?

On July 4 of last year, two college students were also killed after a day of rafting when their friend who was allegedly drunk crashed into a pole on Folsom Boulevard.

“If alcohol had been banned on the river that fateful day, Kendall and Brian would be alive today. We’re sure of that,” said Lui’s mother Fong. Fong and Susan, the other victim’s mother, both spoke today during a news conference in support of the bill.

And if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s: no, you’re not sure of that. There’s absolutely no reason to believe that banning alcohol for everyone on the river would have saved your children’s lives. They were already breaking the law by drinking and driving, so why would you believe that they wouldn’t be inclined to drink even though it was forbidden?

But what chance do reason and logic have in the face of grieving mothers?

A kid who drank too much and drove home killed his friends. Yes, that’s sad. But the issue is kids who drink too much and then drive home, not whether people shouldn’t be allowed to have a beer while they’re out rafting.

But you can’t argue with a mother’s tears, because a mother who has lost a child is infallible. If you disagree with anything they say, you’re a monster. That’s why MADD is so good at pushing their agenda: tugging heartstrings helps tug the government’s purse strings, and then they’ll tell us what we can and can’t do “for our own good”.

i don’t smoke, but much like everything else in life, i support people’s rights to do as they will to their own bodies, and i support the right of property owners to decide for themselves whether or not to allow smoking on their premises.

yeah yeah, “second hand smoke” bla bla bla; seriously, if you don’t like the smoke in a bar, go to a bar that doesn’t allow smoking. or stay home. if you work in a bar and you don’t like smoking, get another job. if you can’t get another job for some strange reason (i mean for christ’s sake, you work in a bar) i shouldn’t have to take your inability to make a living into consideration when deciding how i want to run my own business.

anyway, this isn’t “smokesjournal”, but i just liked this story about a bar in england, where they’re apparently as uppity about smoking as many american munincipalities are, which has tried to skirt the rules by declaring themselves an embassy for a tiny carribean island whose “king” is a good friend of the pub owner.

it probably won’t work out for them, and that’s too bad, but it’s refreshing to see a business owner try and buck a system that’s increasingly intrusive (on both sides of the pond.)

i wonder if they have the same rules in england though, where you can’t even be drunk in a bar. we might be ahead of them on that one.

just last week i mentioned how massachusetts used to (and maybe still does, i dunno) try all kinds of crazy schemes to stop college kids from getting kegs. well, i guess the state legislature of south carolina must have been listening, because they’ve gone and done the same.

apparently they want to install tracking devices on kegs so they can determine if the keg is used to serve underage drinkers.

the last few sentences of this opinion piece sum it up nicely:

Whenever someone passes a law limiting the freedom of adults — and remember, in every legal sense an 18-year-old is an adult — I ask two simple questions: What’s the bad thing that’s happening that the government wants to stop, and can the government stop it without doing even more damage along the way?

The 21-year-old drinking age fails both tests. There’s absolutely nothing bad happening when an 18-year-old has a beer. If he has a beer and drives, that’s a different story, but it’s no different from the 38-year-old drunk driver.

Cracking down on drunk driving is public safety. Cracking down on drinking itself is a public nuisance.

frankly i’m still not convinced that there’s a problem “if he has a beer and drives”, but i’ll concede that point for now, in order to agree with the overall sentiment. there is absolutely no reason the government should be telling adults what they can and cannot do, as long as they’re not causing anyone else any harm.

there was an article i read today about the state of michigan raising the deposit on kegs from 10$ to 30$ a keg.

the story really isn’t that interesting, it’s just that people can get more than 10 bucks by selling the keg for scrap rather than take it back to the store where they got it. beer makers whined to the government, who then raised the price of the deposit to try and ensure people would bring the keg back.

when i first read the headline, i thought it was going to be a story about the state raising prices to try and stop underage drinking or some nonsense like that, because years ago when i lived in boston, there was a period where the city and state passed a number of measures trying to make keg sales inconvenient so that college kids wouldn’t kill themselves at keggers. i’m sure it worked, and i’m sure there are no longer any keggers in boston.

sarcasm, yes.

so, i was glad to see that this wasn’t an act of prohibition on the part of the state of michigan, but was simply the state pandering to business interests as usual.

however, it reminded me of something i learned when i moved to florida. you see, you can’t buy a 40 ounce bottle of malt liquor in florida. the typical reasoning from the nanny state is that 40 ounces is too much, it encourages binge-drinking, it encourages teenagers to drink, etc.

but what i learned was this: florida doesn’t just ban 40 ounce bottles, it explicitly defines what bottle sizes are allowed: 8oz, 12oz, 16oz, and 32oz. there have been efforts to repeal this, mainly by microbreweries who prefer a 22oz bottle, but also by miller brewing company. (according to this article from realbeer.com, the law was originally passed in 1965 thanks to much lobbying by anheuser-busch, who coincidentally used those very same sizes as their standard bottle sizes. miller, one of their biggest competitors, did not use the same sizes and had to suck it up when forced to change.)

but it may surprise you who the biggest opponents are to repealing the size limitations. it’s not the prohibitionists, it’s BEER DISTRIBUTORS, as this report from the florida legislature outlines. if the state allows bottle sizes other than the ones currently mandated by law, the distributors will have to pay more for warehouse space, new crates, new boxes, truck space, and other costs of changing the way they do business.

so for right now, we still don’t have 40s in florida. i don’t know if i’m happy that it’s not the state being prohibitionist, or if i’m sad that it’s the state using the law to help an industry that doesn’t want to compete without the help of the government.

ADDENDUM: i just remembered another interesting example of the government passing regulations to cater to businesses that has an impact on the alcohol industry; i learned this on a winery tour once. apparently, wineries often buy barrels from whiskey distilleries in order to store and age their wines. the distilleries sell them because they’re not allowed to re-use barrels. why aren’t they allowed to re-use the barrels, you ask? because the BARREL MAKING INDUSTRY lobbied for that regulation. barrel makers!

seriously, guys. if you can’t make money in your business, get another business.

i don’t know how it is now, but when i lived in new orleans there were drive-through daquiri shops, because the open container laws were such that passengers in a car could drink as long as the driver wasn’t drinking.

i mean, that makes perfect sense, if you’re a rational person with a reasonable mind. if one is only concerned with stopping drunken drivers, then one should focus on the driver. the only reason to ban passengers from drinking is because “oh, well the driver may be trying to trick us, and may be drinking anyway, but the passenger is holding the cup!” (well if he’s drunk when you pull them all over, then fucking arrest him. how hard is that?)

open container laws are really no more than thoughtcrimes, like drug paraphenalia laws. they take a perfectly legal item and make it illegal because of what the suspect might think about doing with it.

anyway, georgia is obviously different from new orleans. apparently it is illegal for liquor stores to even sell cups of ice, because:

1. NATURALLY if you have a cup of ice in your car, it means you’re going to mix your liquor with it
2. if you don’t have any ice in your car, there’s no way you’re going to drink any liquor

naturally, MADD has a problem with this liquor store that sells ice, (mostly because they have a problem with liquor stores that sell liquor), and they use completely rational (and not at all fallacious) arguments like:

“They don’t know if that person that they just sold that alcohol to has kids in the car,” said Snead.

and

“What if your child gets killed or your loved one gets killed because of somebody who buys a cup in here and has a drink in here on the way home?” said James.

you may already be aware of this, but this is a reminder: anytime anyone mentions children while they’re trying to convince you of something, they are probably lying to you.

There’s been a lot of talk on the news recently about Florida’s soon-to-materialize crackdown on people supplying kids with alcohol at home. One recent article in particular comes from the St. Pete times, for reference:

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/05/15/News/Adults_told__no_booze.shtml

I can understand why it might not be a good idea to get other people’s kids drunk, but then there’s articles like this one from the University of Florida:

http://news.ufl.edu/2007/04/17/alcohol-kids/

with comments like this:

In most states, parents can legally provide alcohol to their children inside the home. Some parents may do this because of cultural or religious events, but Komro said she thinks parents should be cautious about the message this sends to teens.

So what “message” is that, exactly? That sometimes you can have a drink and it’s ok? That sounds like a perfectly reasonable message. Or should we instead be sending the message “drinking alcohol is always bad; there are no exceptions; your ‘cultural or religious events’ are irrelevant”?

Luckily, in the face of hysteria we have the voice of reason: scientific studies!

Drinking at home ‘cuts bingeing’