 Ironically
enough, I am writing this column around my 21st birthday.
Yesterday, I changed my registration so I could vote in Watauga
County. There were a variety of reasons for doing this, but one
of them was so I could participate in a growing effort to change
an outdated statute on Boone’s law books, the law banning liquor
and mixed drinks within the town.
I say outdated because when I first heard that Boone actually had
a law like this, I thought someone had to be kidding. I knew Boone
had been a “dry” town back when my mother went here, but
still, I figured times had changed since then.
Such laws are prohibition-era relics, and immediately conjure images
to mind of bootleggers, gangsters and grainy black and white footage
of policemen busting open barrels of booze with axes.
As anyone who’s read a history book knows, prohibition didn’t
exactly work. Actually, it made the problem worse. Boone’s
liquor laws are about as useful.
For one, there is the problem of choice. I’m not a particularly
frequent or heavy drinker by any stretch of the imagination. I usually
have neither the time nor money, for one thing, and going around
in a constant alcohol induced haze and vomiting frequently isn’t
quite my idea of fun.
But that’s my choice. If someone wants to go out and drink
mixed drinks or liquor in a bar or in his/her home, that should
be their choice. As long as they don’t do something stupid
like drive, it’s not anyone else’s business.
Plus, it’s not particularly effective. Those who wish to get
stinking drunk on liquor can simply go outside town limits and bring
back whatever they want, or do it somewhere else. If anything, the
law probably increases the number of people who go to a nearby place
like Blowing Rock, get drunk, and then drive back here, making things
more dangerous for everyone.
Like most unnecessarily intrusive laws regulating personal behavior,
it usually just makes things worse.
Then there’s the money. If aforementioned people had the choice
to drink liquor or mixed drinks in Boone, this area, rather than
another, would get the profits from it and the same inebriated people
would be less likely to drive back from someplace else.
So if local businesses could profit, and if the removal of the law
could potentially reduce the amount of drunk drivers out there,
why is it still on the books?
Hopefully it won’t be for much longer. An alliance of local
businesses and groups is trying to put a referendum up for the 2004
elections that would eliminate this archaic and unnecessary law.
First though, they need several thousand signatures of registered
voters in Boone to put the issue on the ballot.
It’s time for the citizens of Boone, especially students, to
be able to have a choice about what they drink.
There are many and probably better reasons for students to register
to vote in Watauga, but even if one doesn’t care about local
politics that much, this is a law that effects everyone, and it’s
time to end it. Students have the numbers to swing an election and
I hope that is what happens this time.
So register to vote, sign the petitions, and
come November 2004, let’s bring Boone into the modern age.
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