It is well known that the liquor laws here in my (some day former) home state are f’d up. There have been laws making it illegal to set your drink down. They tried to make the sale of cold beer illegal. You can’t buy beer after 1:00AM. Heaven knows that if you buy beer at 12:59AM you’ll drink responsibly but if you buy it at 1:00:01AM you won’t drink responsibly. My local course can’t sell beer on the 4th hole and the first half of the 5th hole, because those holes are within different city boundaries and they can’t get a permit for the 2nd city.
The state has a monopoly on liquor sales, forcing all sales of booze to be through state owned liquor stores, and is profiting $220,000 PER DAY by jacking up the rates 87%. I pay about $10 for a bottle of wine which I can find in any other state for $5.
Recently I personally experienced a law at a restaurant which blew my mind. This law didn’t allow a waitress who was under 21 years of age to hand me a freaking wine list. Yes a person under 21 couldn’t hand me a piece of paper with letters from the English alphabet printed on it. Those letters actually formed words which can be found in the English language. It is a good thing she wasn’t allowed to even handle that piece of paper. It may have saved her life and many others. Being under 21, this person may have inadvertently read words from the English language which talked about wine. She would have then obviously lost control of herself and all of her personal judgement. She would have obviously then gone on an uncontrollable drunken rampage, killing several people and several small animals… or something like that.
One terribly stupid law, which has made us look like idiots to all who travel here is the “private club” law. To serve hard booze, a bar has to be a “private club.” To enter such a club, you must be a card carrying (paying) member of the club. So some business traveler who is in town for 48 hours has to buy a membership to a club just to enter and have a drink at the end of the day. Wisely, when the world was in town for the 2002 Olympics, lawmakers temporarily suspended this law. If a law isn’t suitable or reasonable 24/7/365, why have it in the first place?
Why all the stupid liquor laws?
It is pretty clear that the LDS (mormon) church is to blame for all of these idiotic laws. They use their immense local power to force down the throats legislate their religious beliefs on all who live and travel here. I was blown away to see this quote brazenly displayed in a local news story:
The liquor reform package was hammered out during weeks of intense negotiations with (Governor) Huntsman’s staff, legislators, and representatives of the hospitality and restaurant industries and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“…and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”????!!!! WTF? Are you freaking kidding me? Separation of church and state isn’t even a thought here and the lack of such is proudly written in news stories without so much as a blink.
Step upto the bar, Mr. Young
How about this not so humorous story. Guess who owns the most liquor licenses in Provo, Utah? No idea? Mormon Church owned Brigham Young University. It seems that there are a fixed number of liquor licenses per capita available, and when bars sell them, lose them or go out of business, BYU snatches them up. One day there will be NO bars in Provo (or what some of us like to call “Provostan”).
I could go on ranting about this, but I need to run and buy some warm beer and some overpriced wine. I’ll be back soon, unless I get arrested for putting my drink down on a table.
HOGWire – Golf Industry News
