Village votes on ending prohibition

[deadparrot]

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, June 11 (UPI) -- The village of Togiak, Alaska, plans to vote Tuesday to decide whether to end its longtime prohibition on alcohol.

Residents say bootlegging, illegal drinking and crime has increased after budget cuts reduced the city's four-man police force to one, the Anchorage (Alaska) Daily News reported.

Mayor Gary Carlos says the village's 24-year prohibition has raised a generation of binge drinkers who guzzle bottles of liquor to hide evidence, he said.

Carlos said people will drink moderately and more safely if alcohol is legal, although police officer Bill Ferris thinks it's a bad idea. "It'll pretty much be non-stop drinking," Ferris said.

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060611-050127-4814r

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. I used to live in a dry town

The next township over was "wet" and the number of wrecks of people driving home after binge drinking was incredible-a drunk driver killed a principal and some basketball players. Of course the "private clubs" wanted to keep it that way, as did the people in the neighboring township. But after so many people were killed in one wreck, the town went wet. Bars and liquor stores came in, the economy improved, and the number of deaths from drunk drivers plummetted-down to zero the first year, I believe. You can't regulate morality. Making one thing illegal (like drinking) just makes it easier to do other illegal acts (like driving drunk; bootleggers don't have to obey the law about limiting the amount of alcohol their customers consume). I only wish they'd do the same thing where I live now; there are always wrecks with innocent people killed by drunks driving back from the state line, tanked to the gills. And in my neighborhood, a young man was killed the day before his wedding; I had to walk past the wreckage to get home, and there was at least a case of beer, with empty cans, strewn across the roadway.

[Warpy]

2. Highway 666, which has just had its name changed ,

goes from Gallup NM up through the east end of the Navajo Rez. It has the distinction of being the deadliest stretch of road in the US due to all the drunk driving crashes of folks on their way home from Gallup after partying in the dozens of bars and heading back to the dry Rez still blotto.

My own feeling is that the road would be safer but the kids would still be at risk if drinking were legal and people could kill themselves drinking at home. However, the tribe has decided otherwise and it's their decision, not mine.

(This isn't a slam against Navajos, who are some of the finest folks on the planet, but it's a statement of fact about a dangerous road and the bars that make it that way. Alcoholism doesn't hit a higher percentage of tribal folks than it does nontribal folks, but it does seem to hit them a whole lot harder.)

[whatwasthequestion]

3. But can't they buy

and bring it back to their homes. The town I was raised in also had "blue laws" - laws that did not allow the sale of alcohol on certain days or times. Next county over was "dry", but that just disallowed sales. Seems unconstitutional, does it not?
A bootlegger once asked my age and would not sell to me - a six pack -until I convinced him that I was sharing with a friend and would not drink and drive.
We also discussed the politics of whom he planned to vote for sheriff and why. nice gentleman, really...