• sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago

    We have state-run liquor stores, and nobody else is allowed to sell anything harder than beer and hard lemonade (except restaurants and bars can sell prepared drinks). So stores with attached liquor stores just aren’t a thing, and generally speaking, the liquor store is a few blocks away from the nearest grocery (one major exception is a liquor store near an Asian market).

    That said, I hear the state-run liquor stores are pretty good, and they’ll get pretty much any kind of liquor you ask for if they don’t stock it.

    I don’t really understand the point though. Why not just open it up, tax it, and require checking id? Kids still drink here, and they get it the same way they do in areas with looser liquor laws: someone buys it for them.

    • AlligatorBlizzard@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      I used to live in a small Minnesota town and the only liquor store was run by the city. The prices were reasonable for how rural we were, and apparently some of the profits helped with city expenses. However, there was a grocery store 15 years ago or so that apparently wanted to open in the town and also have it’s own liquor store, but the town denied their permits for the liquor store for officially unclear reasons, lol.

      Getting someone else to buy it isn’t actually the only way kids get it in states with really loose liquor laws - when I was a teen, I heard of a few places, mostly gas stations, that never carded. Eventually they got busted by the cops, but they sold a lot of booze to my friends before that happened. I don’t think that’s justification for exclusively state run liquor stores though. But I bet the people working at government run stores get better benefits and more stable hours than the ones working for private businesses…