LET'S TALK ABOUT OUR BEVERAGE SALES

Most communities have a certain cross-section of citizens that try to protect a family-oriented lifestyle in both urban and rural settings. While I would like to protect that, Sunday liquor sales have been bandied about  for many years. I served numerous years on the Substance Abuse Council in one southern Michigan county. More recently, I took note of a County here in Kentucky subjected to a testing of their Sunday Liquor Law.

Proponents of such sales argue “right of choice.” I defend that right to choice. up to a point, until our right becomes someone else’s risk. Of course, there are always limitations to personal rights. That is why we are a nation of law and order, governed by a Constitution. Without our passing a Law demanding we drive on the right side of the road, there would be no safety on the highway. If we did not have stringent laws against murder, there would be no such thing as living in security. 
Most of us understand such reasoning.

By the same token, some ambivalent public officials  sweetly suggest that “morality cannot be legislated.” We all know that. Thus, history gives us the legal security of such moral protections as the Ten Commandments and the current legal system that gives us the safety of a reasonable legal system.

As we approach our holiday season, many communities nationwide will celebrate Thanksgiving to New Year’s day as an opportunity to: Tie One On.” Across the years, I have also assisted Mothers Against Drunk Driving, using the slogan “Tie One On … For Safety” and I distributed my shared of Red Ribbons.

I don’t know whether such efforts are even recognized in my relocated home in Kentucky, but I would offer this suggestion: Community liquor sales, weekend or otherwise, are inconsistent with a family-oriented lifestyle. This is especially true, in regions that place great public value on the Christian lifestyle, as does Kentucky. I also recognize there is a great debate over this theme within the Christian political camp.

That being said, here are three reasons why I would if I could refrain from eating out in a restaurant that maintains a bar and why I would buy my groceries where alcoholic beverages were not sold.

I. WE ARE SENDING THE WRONG MESSAGE TO THE WRONG PEOPLE.

`Many communities celebrate efforts like “Tie One On … For Safety!” Police Agencies in most communities work with the children throughout the school year, teaching them “It is all right to say NO!” 

Refusing to recognize the epidemic proportions of our current drug abuse and nationwide “Opioid Epidemic” only makes our approval of public sales, weekend or otherwise, utterly inconsistent with what we are trying to teach those coming behind us.

II.IT IS OUR ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE ITSELF THAT IS THE NUMBER ONE DRUG OFFENSE.

Alcohol is a known depressant; legal, yes, but lethal when indulged. Alcohol manufacturers often support substance abuse education while claiming rigid drug enforcement would eliminate the problem. This denies statistical information and ignores the experience of perhaps seventy-five million Americans suffering with alcoholic family members.

Alcohol alters judgement, slows reaction time, dulls one’s senses and destroys brain cells. Many choose to deny these facts; others live with the horrors of people with buzzed brains. By itself alcohol, at the last count I had, accounted for $140-billion dollars of America’s $205 billion dollar substance abuse bill. This did not account for the 18-million problem drinkers, 28-million Americans under twenty with an alcoholic parent, or the abuse of alcohol in one-half of all motor fatalities, one-half of all homicides and one-fourth of all suicides.

Social acceptance and public denial make it the most, as Linda Ellerbe once suggested, “baffling, cunning, and powerful of all” drugs. “Bud Lite” may the worst of all offenders simply  because “it is perfectly harmless.” My rebuttal to that is simple: we live with it at our house.

III. RIGHT OF CHOICE IS NOT ALWAYS DEFENSIBLE.

I would be criminally negligent if I insisted on my right to choose to drive on the left lane of the highway. In that case, Sheriff Perdue would grant me guest privileges at the Clark County Detention Center. Never mind that we knew him as a rooky officer with the Winchester PD. Never mind that he ate many freebies at our daughter’s dinner table and that he and her husband came by at all hours raiding the ‘Frig”. Never mind those wholesome down-home conversations he had with my deceased companion.

Government sets the limits of morality it will enforce. Yet,, no society exists without enforcement of some “moral” code (Granted: government benefits from taxing beverage sales while leaving the John Q Public to pick up the tab at a rate of $3 of cost for every $1 of tax revenue).

The one freedom of choice for the drink-and-drive citizen is the freedom to enjoy the consequences. The alternative is to accept personal responsibility for behavior that results in addiction, abuse, or alcoholism, but few willingly accept that responsibility. Thus; more states are passing laws against “drunkenness”  as a legal defense.

I am

walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

suggesting the real problem is not alcohol but personal rejection of accountability.