Robbinsville, in the mountains of western North Carolina, will vote Tuesday, Nov. 2, on the sale of beer and wine in the state’s last dry county. The referendum doesn’t include hard liquor, such as whiskey or vodka. It’s the first time the issue has been put to a public vote since Graham County outlawed alcohol...
As I listened Tuesday to a N.C. House committee discuss an alcohol bill, I thought about how America debated the 18th Amendment. In 1917, and for years after that. I thought about how we spoke to each other — those influenced by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League. Those from worlds where...
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, March 7, with comments from Wake County ABC General Manager Ike Wheeler. A week or so ago, a group of people who don’t like the idea of people drinking liquor got together to denounce efforts to privatize the state monopoly on alcohol sales, storage, and distribution....
We should sell government liquor stores and warehouses to private interests, eliminate regulatory barriers to competition, and confine government’s role to enforcing a minimum-age requirement and punishing criminal acts.
The misguided and ultimately debilitating and tragic ban of alcohol that we called Prohibition was, at its core, about control. Control of our time, our choices, and our habits. Control of our money and our freedom to live and to prosper as we saw fit. Lawmakers and bureaucrats use and abuse the word, sometimes in...
