Mmm Friday.
It’s my youngest sister’s birthday today, she’s turning 16. Egads, 16! This is a big birthday for her because in Maine you can drop out of school without your parent’s consent when you’re 16, and she’s been claiming she would for a couple years. Because of her recent change of schools and tutoring I’m hoping that she’s changed her mind, but I can so easily see her getting upset and annoyed one day and quitting on a whim. I’ll give her a call tonight to see how she’s doing.
The week slowed down a lot for me after tuesday, which is great, I’m not feeling mopey or stressed out anymore. I’m really looking forward to movie night tonight at
Which brings me to another subject, Pennsylvania’s liquor laws.
Pennsylvania is a “dry state” which basically means they have stupid alcohol laws.
All “Wine and Spirits” shops are state run, and often have strange hours. Just last year they opened a few on Sundays, which was quite a radical change.
You can only buy beer in restaurants that have a liquor license (and there are plenty around here that don’t) or at a “Beer Store” where they only sell beer by the case. Many establishments have skirted the law a bit by opening “restaurants” that sell cheap take-out food and have TONS of beer by the bottle and six-pack, but those are mostly in the city.
It’s all very strange. I guess they established this model because they are against drinking, thinking that if you limit the places and times people can buy it at you might limit their drinking somehow. I think it’s done the opposite, at least in our case. When you buy beer you can’t just buy a six-pack to enjoy for the evening, you need to buy a whole case (and now that I have a whole case in my fridge you better believe I’m going to drink it!). When we drop by the liquor store we stock up because going to the store when it’s open is a pain and who knows when we’ll have the time to come back?
I should look around for alcoholic statistics nationwide (most of what I find just deals with under-aged drinking), taking into consideration rural vs city areas (because we all know that there is nothing to do in rural america except drink </sarcasm>). Does Maine have a higher rate because you can buy hard liquor in some grocery stores? Do Pennsylvania’s crazy-feeling laws actually make fewer people drink?
We should just abolish these silly laws, and the drinking age. I think they often turn out doing more harm than good. I drank much more before I turned 21 than I do now, and I know that’s true for most people.