The illogic of U.S. liquor laws
An invitation from friends recently tempted us out of the covid-free sanctuary of home to Rock Town Distillery in the SOMA neighborhood of Little Rock.
We sat at a socially distanced four-top in the distillery’s well-ventilated tasting room, and each of us ordered a cocktail: an old-fashioned, Rock Town’s new limited-edition rice bourbon whiskey one on the rocks, the other up, and a Vieux Carre.
Rock Town offers a daily special that’s half the price of its regular cocktail lineup. On this occasion it had something to do with spirits, toasted marshmallows and other s’mores flavors.
Our hosts, who are familiars at Rock Town, asked the server to bring one of the s’mores-based concoctions for a group sampling. He said sure, but it would not be delivered right away. Not because he was too busy, he added, but because there’s an Arkansas law that disallows serving anyone more than one drink at a time.
Other than regulations governing hours that alcoholic drinks can be served, and the statewide ban on the ability to buy packaged alcoholic beverages on Sundays (or anywhere in the state on Christmas), I’d never heard this one.
There are more, according to alcoholproblemsandsolutions.org:
■ Arkansas permits patrons to remove partially consumed bottles of wine from restaurants. But they can’t drink any of it in a car, because the state prohibits drinking by anyone in a motor vehicle on a public highway. However, it is legal to possess an open alcohol container in a vehicle.
■ State alcohol laws permit family members to provide alcohol to those of any age under 21. “Family” might include a spouse of any age.
■ The use of a false ID to buy alcohol is a criminal act. It is also a criminal act to make, lend, transfer, or sell false IDs (which was a lucrative money-maker for several skillful forgers in my suburban Cleveland high school who could easily change, say, a birth year of 1952 to 1950 on a plastic driver’s license with the help of a fine-tipped black marker and a coating of clear nail polish).
At the time, high schoolers all wanted to have IDs stating they were 18 years old, which allowed them entrance to the city’s rockin’ downtown music clubs like the Agora and Viking Saloon, where they were allowed to buy 3.2 percent alcohol beer (not that it was worth drinking).
■ Arkansas prohibits anyone from boating while intoxicated (BWI), which includes operating jet skis and riding water skis or similar devices. Boaters age 21 or older are guilty of intoxication if they have a blood alcohol content of 0.08 percent or higher. If under 21, they are guilty at 0.02 percent.
Our entire country has a whimsical past when it comes to drinking. According to W. J. Rorabaugh’s “A Brief History of U.S. Drinking” on the website JSTOR Daily, a digital library of peer-reviewed research in academic journals, books, and other material, Europeans who traveled to North America in the 1600s were already heavy drinkers.
“In 1770, many Americans opened the day with a drink and consumed rum or hard cider with every meal,” he writes. “People of all ages drank; even toddlers, who enjoyed the sugary dregs of their parents’ rum toddies.”
After the American Revolution, the British refused to supply the former colonies with rum, he continues. Luckily, Kentucky and Ohio had plenty of corn that could be transformed into whiskey. “Farmers produced such large volumes that whiskey ended up being cheaper than beer, coffee, or milk. Given contamination in many water supplies, it was also safer than water.”
By 1830, U.S. residents over age 15 drank more than seven gallons of alcohol a year.
“Instead of a morning coffee break, Americans stopped work at 11 a.m. to drink,” Rorabaugh writes. “A lot of work went undone, but in this slowpaced pre-industrial age, this was not always a problem.”
Although New England ministers declared public drunkenness a sin, they weren’t opposed to drinking in general, he continues. “Still, some Protestant ministers warned that drinking led too easily to drunkenness and demanded total abstinence.” The temperance movement gained strength, and by 1850, half the population had stopped drinking entirely.
Prohibition became law with the ratification of the 18th Amendment in 1919, which banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of liquor in the U.S.; when it ended Dec. 5, 1933, many states kept alcohol illegal.
“But in the prosperous post-World War II years, drinking rose again,” Rorabaugh writes. States went their separate ways on drinking laws, with the only commonality being the need to be 21 to purchase alcohol.
Arkansas laws have plenty of company in the weirdness category. According to insider.com and other online sources, drink specials are illegal in North Carolina. Bars and liquor stores can’t open until polls close on election days in Alaska (this was in effect when I first came to Arkansas, but was repealed in 1989). Hard liquor in Pennsylvania (and several other states) is only available in state-owned stores.
Out-of-state IDs aren’t proof of age in Massachusetts, where happy hours are not allowed. Beer with alcohol content of four percent and higher needs to be sold at room temperature in Oklahoma liquor stores. In Iowa, you can start a tab at a bar, but it must be paid in full before leaving.
In considering the validity of these oddities, as well as those in our own state, take the wise advice offered by alcoholproblemsandsolutions.org:
“Arkansas alcohol laws can be hard to understand. That means they’re easy to misunderstand. Lawyers spend years studying law. Never rely on this site. Nor any other site.”