[OT] New York State alcohol laws

[jeh25]

[Q]jtwcornell91 Wrote:

  I know it was raised from 18 to 19, and then to 21 ...  Does anybody have concrete or personal confirmation of when the laws were changed?  (I know they didn't grandfather them in, and I believe some people were 18 when the age was raised to 19 and 19 or 20 when it was raised to 21.)  [/q]

Well, Eric and Scott have already weighted in, but my friend Matt was high school class of '84 and he was one of the poor souls they kept changing it on. He couldn't drink at 17, could drink at 18, maybe got grandfathered for the change to 19?, then couldn't drink when it changed to 21, and then finally could drink at 21.

When I talk to him next, I'll ask about the grandfathering.

[andy]

Loud Guy: New york state alcohol laws...

Everyone in crowd: SUCK!!

[Trotsky]

[Q]ericho_4511 Wrote:
they would raise the drinking age to 30.[/q]
IIRC, there's a Philip K. Dick novel in which that's the case.

[Beeeej]

I think you could say that about most things.

"Man, I got so drunk the other night - I woke up yesterday morning in the Topeka, Kansas school board meeting room with my pants down around my ankles, a copy of Darwin's The Origin of Species up my ass, Marvin Gaye playing on the stereo, and empty juice boxes scattered everywhere."
"Dude, wasn't that in a Philip K. Dick novel?"

Beeeej

[billhoward]

Middlebury president John McCardell opined last October (once he had safely retired to South Carolina) that one of the biggest mistakes of his tenure was not speaking out against the 21-year-drinking age that was "bad policy and bad law" and probably promoted binge drinking.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

[Q]andy Wrote:

 Loud Guy: Pennsylvania alcohol laws...

Everyone in crowd: SUCK!![/q]

Fixed your post.  

You can't even buy a beer in a grocery store in this state.  They just passed a law to allow you to buy a case of beer on a Sunday, but only during limited hours, and only from a "beer distributor".

And the state still runs the liquor stores and limits who and what you can buy.

[KeithK]

As strange as it still seems to see hard liquor in a supermarket (in CA), esp. when it's in the same aisle as things like milk and eggs, the inherent deregulation has got to be good for consumers.  I have no problem believing that the folks who originally set up laws like the one Jeff describes were well meaning based on their moral codes.  But human nature being what it is, this type of regulatory scheme ends up doing little more than enriching particular players at the expense of the average citizen.

[Tub(a)]

[Q]Jeff Hopkins '82 Wrote:

 [Q2]andy Wrote:

 Loud Guy: Pennsylvania alcohol laws...

Everyone in crowd: SUCK!![/Q]
Fixed your post.  

You can't even buy a beer in a grocery store in this state.  They just passed a law to allow you to buy a case of beer on a Sunday, but only during limited hours, and only from a "beer distributor".

And the state still runs the liquor stores and limits who and what you can buy.
[/q]

Beer in bars is significantly cheaper here. It's no great chore to find drafts of Yeungling for a dollar a piece, which is good.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

For those who aren't familiar with the stupidity, Pennsylvania's archaic beer laws:

- You can buy single bottles or cans in a bar or restaurant, but you must drink them there.  No take out.
- You can only buy a six-pack in a bar or restaurant, but you must take them out.  You can't drink them there.  There a limit of two six-packs.
- You can only buy a case of beer at a beer distributor, but you can't buy smaller packages there.  However, you're not allowed to put it in your own car.  The salesman must do that.

All wine and liquor is sold by the state in a very limited number of stores.   The selection is horrendously limited except for a few stores in the larger cities, where the selection improves to merely awful.  We have one state designated "specialty store" with for the entire Lehigh Valley - a population center of over 350,000 people.  The state will order cases of wine for you that are not on the regular sales list provided they have a sales agreement with the winery.  However, the prices are quite inflated and the state does this at a very large profit.

The real story here is that the Liquor Store workers have a very powerful, rich union, and any time that a politician talks about privatization, the lobbying money comes out, the advertisements about "We're protecting your children" start, and the issue goes away.

[jtwcornell91]

And yet Pennsylvania has only the second screwiest set of liquor laws in the country.  (To any non-Mormon who's lived in Utah, the number 3.2 has a "special" meaning.)

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

Yeah, at least we never had 3.2 beer during my lifetime.

I lived in W. Virginia just after they switched from 3.2 beer sold only in ABC stores to regular beer and malt liquor sold in the local mini mart or gas station.   There was only a slight ::rolleyes:: increase in the rate of DWI for the next year or two.