Behold the horror of this bill, currently before the Missouri State Senate SB763:
- SB-763: This act prohibits any grocery store or convenience store from selling individually packaged beer or beer that is refrigerated below 60 degrees on the premises. The Supervisor of the Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control may suspend or revoke a license for any violation of this provision.
The goal is to reduce drunk driving. Apparently, the idea is that nobody will want to drink warm beer from the store, so they'll have to take it home and spend an hour waiting for it to get cold, first.
Fine. But sometimes you buy a six-pack, take it home, and want a beer straightaway - you don't want to wait an hour for it to get cold. And just think of what that would do to the traditional Beer Run!
You pay good money for warm beer in the U.K. Bloody mad but anyway.
Hmm. Someday I’m going to dig up the statistics to compare states on drunk driving and alcohol sales. I mean, in Louisiana they have drive-through daquiri stores – you CAN’T wait too long to drink a frozen drink, can you? Just sayin’ is all.
That said, I am against impaired driving – drunk, exhausted, or distracted. And if you have four twenty year olds in a car at three a.m. they probably have all three impairments working against them. I don’t know how you convince them to act with greater responsibility, but I’m pretty sure you don’t accomplish it by legislating about the temperature of beer in a grocery store.