Here’s a way to entertain yourself if you’re bored on a Sunday afternoon. Go to a grocery store that sells alcohol and wander around until you find someone with some beer or wine in their cart. Then go up to them and tell them that Indiana prohibits alcohol sales on Sunday.Then wait.First they’ll look surprised because a stranger just walked up and talked to them, and in today’s America we try to avoid interacting with strangers if at all possible.Once the surprise fades, they’ll probably smile at you, thinking that you’re fooling them. They’ll give you a moment to say, “Just kidding!” or something similar, but when you say nothing they’ll look confused and ask, “Are you serious?”When you say, “Yes,” their look will change to disbelief, followed by dejection. If they’re carrying alcohol, their shoulders will slump. They might put the alcohol down right where they’re standing and then walk out.Welcome to Indiana!
The Hoosier state is the only state in the country that currently bans alcohol sales state-wide on Sunday. Other states ban sales of hard liquor on Sunday, or limit the hours that alcohol can be sold on Sunday, but only Indiana bans all retail alcohol sales on Sunday.Well, sort of. Even in Indiana you can buy a case of beer from a brewery on Sunday. And you can order alcohol for on-premises consumption on Sunday.So if you go to a restaurant you can have a glass of wine. If you go to the Colts game, you can order a beer. But if you go to your cousin Jimmy’s Flag Day cookout in his backyard and he forgot to buy beer, you’re out of luck.I feel like I’m writing this in 1925. That can’t be true though because the Internet didn’t exist in 1925. And the calendar on my computer says that it’s 2015, so that must be right.But why the heck does Indiana still have such an archaic law on the books? Who knows? I could say it’s because our state legislators haven’t progressed in their thinking in 90 years, but that sounds cynical, even if it is true.Actually, they have made one change to the alcohol laws. Before 2010 alcohol sales were prohibited on Election Day. That law remained from decades ago when bars and saloons doubled as polling places. I think they try to refrain from using such places now though. But I’m all for selling alcohol on Election Day. Could drunk voters elect worse representatives than sober Hoosier voters have?The Sunday alcohol sales issue came up in the state legislature last month. Some had hoped the measure would pass this time despite its past failures. No dice though. People opposed to the measure killed it by adding a bizarre amendment that required grocery, drug, and convenience stores to sell alcohol only from separate, partitioned areas. The cost of adding those areas to stores that already sell alcohol would have been enormous, so the bill failed.Come on, Indiana! We’ve spent decades trying to convince the rest of the country that there is more than corn in Indiana, but by “more” I’m pretty sure we didn’t mean crazy laws.Surprisingly, in addition to the folks who think God frowns upon selling a twelve pack of some pricey, elitist craft beer on Sunday, liquor store owners are the most vocal in their opposition to selling alcohol on Sunday.Try to follow their thinking:If alcohol is sold on Sunday, then liquor stores will have to open on Sunday. But selling on Sunday isn’t going to increase sales, it’s just going to spread those sales out over an extra day. So they’ll have higher labor costs, but not higher sales, potentially forcing them to close.Are they drunk?Selling alcohol on Sunday will increase total alcohol sales. If they don’t believe this then all they need to do is to go to a liquor store in Lansing, on the Illinois side of the Illinois-Indiana border. The place is hopping on Sunday afternoon, and at least half of the cars in the lot have Indiana plates.Liquor store owners are giving us liver-haters too much credit. They think that I’m going to know ahead of time that I want a beer on Sunday so I’ll just buy that beer on Saturday. Wrong! And I’m not the only one who has killed too many of those memory cells to remember the Sunday prohibition. Go to a grocery store on Sunday and it won’t just be out-of-staters who try to buy the devil’s juice. Plenty of Hoosiers forget, too!It’s time to change the law, Indiana. Calvin Coolidge isn’t president anymore.PREVIOUS POST: Abe Lincoln Isn't On YouTubeIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: How Did I Become a Beer Snob?+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Hey, did you like reading this? If so, you should Share it on Facebook so you can bring joy to others. You can also find tons of other posts by me here. And you can like my Facebook page, Brett Baker Writes. Please.
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