The Devil at work / 8%

In Mississippi news

Governor Bryant has signed into law SB 2878 "which raises the alcohol by-weight limit in beer from 5 percent to 8 percent."

[Cartoon by Marshall Ramsey, Mississippi's cartoonist and host of The Marshall Ramsey Show on Supertalk Mississippi Radio.]

The bill will allow more craft beer to be sold in Mississippi. That's the good news. The bad news is that it won't matter for residents of 36 (of 82 total) counties in the state. Those 36 are dry. And when I say dry, I mean desert dry-- 

from Mississippi Brew Blog

no sales, possession, consumption, production of alcohol. 

The Sovereign State of Mississippi is dry by default. Localities-- counties, cities-- can vote to allow all things alcohol. Just recently, the residents of Starkvegas voted to allow the sale of beer and wine on-- gasp!-- Sunday!! More recently, folks in my little county couldn't even get enough signatures to get the issue (beer sales only) on the ballot.

We boarder a wet county. A small town sits atop the boarder fence, part of it is dry, and part wet. The wet part has a liquor store. The wet part is the run down part of town (not that the whole town isn't run down, it's a matter of degree). If we allow alcohol sales in our county, our whole county will look like the run down part of town. Isn't this obvious?

Democracy run amok.