12 dumbest drinking laws across our great nation
As my grandmother taught me: one should never discuss sex, politics, or religion at the dinner table. These days, it seems politics are nearly unavoidable (especially when you have one relative who leans against the grain of the rest of the family) so what are we supposed to discuss with the holidays on the horizon?
Fear not, the R Street Institute – a free markets-focused think tank – has rounded up the 12 dumbest drinking laws across our great nation. Though edging in on the politics a bit, this list is a riot and will sure to be appreciated by your booze-hound cousin, your teetotaling aunt, and you – the sophisticated whiskey quaffer – alike.
The R Street Institute released this list in honor of Repeal Day: that glorious day in December when all of the bathtubs emptied of their gin and liquor once again flowed freely across these great United States; or, well, for the most part. It seems that despite being almost a century removed from our times of temperance, the rusty claws of anti-salooning liquor laws still squarely sit on the books all over the country – and we aren’t just talking about your run-of-the-mill Blue laws or dry counties. Many of the more obscure laws of the Volstead ilk were scrubbed from the official statutes since 1933, but as places like Kentucky still have anti-horse thieving laws on the registers (a Lexingtonian better dare not walk down the street with a Graeter’s cone in their back pocket for fear of citation for attempted horse theft), other states have preserved sundry moronic abstemious edicts.
The full publication is available to download for free at the R Street Institutes website. It’s a great gift for anyone but especially these friends and relatives:
- The crunchy one who is trying to “go green.” This free and digital gift has no carbon footprint!
- The DC Hill bro who is always proclaiming, “Bruh! Let’s go to happy hour at Hawk and Dove!”
- Your grandmother who just loves new fodder for her email chains she forwards to everyone in her address book (even though you have begged her to remove you from distribution).
- That one person you know who lives in Idaho for some inexplicable reason.
- The one cousin who sports a MAGA hat in every social media post but you still have to find something to talk with them about without instigating a political argument.
- The one who will give you a gift that’s obviously from a yard sale but will also make you feel bad about you not getting them anything. You can print it out for them and pretend you bought it at a chic independent bookseller.
