Time to Let Go of Myths About Alcoholic Beverage Sales

Early voting starts next week for local city and school district elections in Texas. For my former city of residence, Canton, and nearby cities Van and Grand Saline, this includes a local option election on legalizing alcoholic beverage sales in those towns, all currently “dry.”

As a veteran journalist, if there is something I’ve learned about local option elections, it is that you have three groups of voters: those who are against alcoholic beverage sales for moral or religious reasons, those who support alcoholic beverage sales being allowed, and those who really don’t know whether it is a good idea or a bad idea.

It’s the last of those groups that often determine the outcome of the election, and it’s the group for which this opinion essay is intended. Any voter in the other two groups is not going to be swayed to the other side.

That said, here is my statement for the undecided in Van Zandt County’s three cities with this big decision on May 10: There is no logical reason for any of those cities to remain “dry” – not one.

There are, however, a lot of mythological reasons for why they have continued to keep out alcoholic beverage sales to this point, and several of those reasons combine to formulate the central argument for anti-alcohol sales groups. These include the following:

1. Local alcoholic beverage sales are a detriment to our children/families: This is an example of a false causation argument. It tries to directly tie local availability of beer, wine and liquor to physical and emotional abuse in homes. Alcoholic beverage abuse certainly is a factor in many cases where physical and emotional abuse of children and/or a spouse are present. It is not, however, a given fact that anyone who consumes alcohol is more likely to become abusive in personality or behavior. I’ve personally known many outstanding, successful men and women whose parents always kept a fully stocked liquor cabinet. I’ve also known cases of physical and emotional abuse of children where there was not a drop of alcoholic beverages in the household at any time – and I was one such case.
2. We don’t want our local stores and restaurants promoting and selling a dangerous, addictive product: This is hypocrisy on two levels. First, it makes the assumption that most, if not all, people in a community are completely incapable of making reasonable decisions when it comes to purchasing and consuming alcoholic beverages, and therefore we all need the absence of availability to keep us safe. The truth is that people who don’t want to drink alcoholic beverages are not going to start simply because Walmart has a special on 12-packs of Miller Lite. Likewise, those who do are not going to go crazy with consumption habits simply because they can buy it without leaving town. Second (and worse), this argument turns a blind eye to the fact that local stores are selling tons of dangerous, addictive products every day. Still, you never see picket signs or quotes in newspaper articles from alcoholic beverage opponents about all the tobacco products, over-the-counter medications, and junk food that fly off the local shelves.
3. We will have more drunk drivers, alcohol-related traffic accidents and we’ll need more police officers if we allow alcoholic beverage sales: I have heard this specific fear expressed constantly by some people when faced with a local option election. The truly fascinating thing, though, is I’ve never heard it from an actual police officer or state trooper – and that is because there has been no published study supporting the notion. As one area police chief told me a few years ago, it is just the opposite: The farther someone has to drive to have a drink, the more likely that person may drive back while intoxicated. The same police chief also said, “If a person can buy beer locally, you’re talking about a five-minute trip home from the store. If that person has to drive 30-40 minutes each way to buy beer, the temptation to pop open one on the way back is much greater.”
4. Alcoholic beverage sales will do nothing positive for our community: Well, except giving your community the sales tax revenue that has been going for decades to places like Dallas, Kaufman, Terrell, and Tyler. I lived in Canton for a total of 12 years and have been to Van and Grand Saline countless times to cover public meetings and events during my career in newspaper journalism. It does not require a Ph.D. in Physics to know when you have turned off a state highway or FM road onto a local street in any of those cities. Alcoholic beverage sales are not going to generate enough revenue to renovate every street, water line, or sewer line in Canton, Grand Saline, and Van. It may, however, allow the respective city councils to start more repair projects instead of having to say “maybe next year.” Still, if you need to be further convinced that something like restaurants with bars can actually be good for a community, consider the Applebee’s that opened in Canton late in 2012. All it has done since is help rejuvenate business in a shopping center that had been in decline for more than a decade. About 12 miles east on Highway 64, you have the town of Ben Wheeler, where the late Brooks Gremmels and his Ben Wheeler Development Corporation literally resurrected what had been almost a ghost town. Part of that redevelopment plan included two venues for food, live music and, yes, alcoholic beverages. I haven’t heard anyone wishing Ben Wheeler was back the way it was.
5. (and the most ludicrous argument of all) Our city has moral standards that need to be upheld: In the earlier years of my journalism career, I developed 35mm film rolls that were not as thin and flimsy as this statement. Moral standards of a community have nothing to do what beverages are available in a store or at a restaurant. “Dry” cities and counties are not automatically of higher moral character than “wet” areas. Being “dry” doesn’t guarantee a lower crime rate, better schools or cleaner streets. There is, however, one thing I can tell you “dry” cities and counties definitely are: Relics of one of the most embarrassing chapters in American history – Prohibition, when the federal government decided no one in the United States should be able to enjoy anything that had been fermented and poured into a glass. You might remember how well that went; to this day, it is the only instance in the U.S. Constitution where one amendment has been repealed by another amendment. What is not as well remembered is that, in repealing Prohibition, the federal government essentially left it up to individual states to determine the legality of alcoholic beverages, and many states, Texas included, subsequently left the decision with individual municipalities and counties. That is how “dry” and “wet” areas came into being, but it seems only in the “dry” areas that the designation is even considered necessary for brandishing a sense of local merit. The reality is simple: Great cities are great cities for reasons other than what is, or isn’t, sold in the beverage aisles.

Here is another bit of reality the anti-alcohol faction would rather you not know: The vast majority of people who consume alcoholic beverages, myself included, do so responsibly and in moderation. And, contrary to some of the laughable propaganda that has been passed around for years, we really aren’t looking to turn Canton, Van, and Grand Saline into dens of iniquity. If you think that statement is a little dramatic, let me take you back to a feature story I wrote for the Van Zandt News in 2008 looking at the recent opening of licensed Texas Wineries in the county. In that article, the owners of Savannah Winery and Bistro in Canton related the story of how, as they prepared to open in late 2006, someone had felt such religious conviction against the presence of a wine merchant as to borrow from Martin Luther and nail a letter of protest to the front door of the winery – although that conviction apparently was not strong enough to warrant signing the letter.

More than seven years later, Savannah Winery and Bistro is still going strong, and the city of Canton has not gone to hell in a handbasket. I sincerely doubt it will after May 10, 2014, either, if Walmart and Brookshire’s are allowed to start stocking beer and wine, and if a bunch of full bar-endowed new restaurants open.

But that is your upcoming choice in Canton, Grand Saline and Van – and, at the very least, you are finally getting a choice.

The Disappearing Dry Lands

Every now and again, something takes place that squarely falls under the heading “Things you were sure you’d never live to see.”

Such an event took place last weekend in the East Texas county I call home (for the second time). For decades, anyone in Van Zandt County who wanted to buy beer or a couple of bottles of wine had to travel at least 20 to 30 miles westward to find the nearest “wet” town.

Not anymore.

By a rather resounding margin of 188 votes, citizens of Wills Point, Texas, made local history by being the first place in the county to pass a local option election to allow beer and wine sales for off-premise consumption.

There had been only two local option elections inside the county before that, both in the neighboring town of Edgewood and both rejected by a majority of voters. A petition drive four years ago in another Van Zandt town, Van, never made it off the ground.

So why Wills Point and why now? Well, to put it bluntly, the proponents of alcohol sales in this latest election had something on their side the previous hopefuls did not: A truly ragged economic scene.

The moral argument about allowing local alcohol sales is unmovable. In other words, those who believe sipping adult beverages is wrong will never have their minds sway and those who believe it is not wrong will stand their ground as firmly. The only real debate in a wet/dry election is an economic one.

That said, it seems it was easier for cities and towns in Texas to say “No, thanks,” to local alcoholic beverage sales in years past, when the economic picture was considerably brighter or at least on stable ground. It has been a different playing field completely in the past 12 months. Suddenly, an extra $20,000 or more per year in the town’s general fund from alcohol sales tax revenue looks absolutely lovely.

Apparently, a lot more cities and communities in Texas are feeling this way. Of 38 total alcohol sales propositions on May 9 ballots statewide, 31 passed and that included a number of cities going wet for the first time. In the state’s current fiscal year that began in September 2008, there have been 66 alcohol sales proposition passages, only 15 failures.

The alcohol deserts that used to cut wide swaths throughout parts of Texas are quickly disappearing. Cities of all sizes are finally getting warm to the notion of keeping local money local, even if not everyone in town is keen on seeing neon Budweiser signs in the corner convenience store.

Expect the “wetlands” movement in Texas to grow even more in the coming 12-24 months. Wills Point is the first community in Van Zandt County to say goodbye to its dry days, but it will not be the only one.

Legalized alcohol sales alone will not become a magic wand powerful enough to completely reverse a city’s economic fortunes. It could, however, be the factor that keeps property owners from facing another tax rate increase or that keeps water and sewer rates from going up considerably.

It could also be the factor that keeps some stores open for business (and in the areas that allow it in restaurants, keep those businesses going), keeping people employed and with money to spend. The businesses it preserves could, in turn, create a scene that attracts new stores and businesses, even ones that have nothing to do with selling beer and wine.

For Wills Point, that would be a stark change of direction compared to the last 20-plus years. If in the next several months after beer and wine sales begin, the business growth and prosperity in Wills Point are unmistakable, I can see the other major towns in the county gearing up for their own local option election — and sooner than later.

The Big Choice (Reality Remix)

It is somewhat ironic that, on the eve of Election Day 2008, both the Republican and Democratic candidates for President of the United States talked it up about how they will implement “change” in the country.

Their respective campaigns have been rather lacking in that quality.

Thus, I went to the early voting line last week exhibiting all the enthusiasm of someone about to have a wisdom tooth extracted, and somewhat relieved to know the wait to the ballot room would be made slightly more tolerable with the golf game loaded on my cell phone.

I’m sure a lot of people would strongly disagree, but I can’t escape one basic feeling about this supposed all-important presidential election: John McCain and Barack Obama, as a choice of main candidates, have utterly failed to convince me that the next four years are going to be “change for the better.”

Neither has said anything that captured my imagination (or my heartfelt backing).  With the economy in the toilet and a finger on the flusher, the quagmire in Iraq continuing and a multitude of job layoffs, business closures and the like, what I’ve heard for the past four months is….

….the same old tired election year rhetoric.

I guess the pivotal nature of the current times here in the U.S. and worldwide had me hoping for better.  The only thing that looks to fall into that category is the voter turnout; at least I won’t have to hear about (or worse, have to write news articles about) voter apathy.  Having said that, I’m already wondering how soon a voter remorse news story will be appropriate – regardless of who wins.

But that’s politics, as the saying goes, and couldn’t be more true than at the federal level, a behemoth so dissociated from low-income and middle-income citizens it makes Mount Everest seem a 30-minute drive from downtown Dallas.

Maybe it’s unfair to expect much out of a presidential candidate anymore, regardless of what that candidate plans, projects or promises in the effort to get your vote.  The bewildering (and probably irreversible) debt this country is in did not happen overnight or during any one four-year term, and it will not go away in the same span of time.  The only cleanup job of this magnitude I’ve ever read about is Hercules and the livestock stalls of King Augeas.

Try as they might and with the most sincere of intentions, neither John McCain nor Barack Obama is going to turn into another Hercules.

Then again, maybe it won’t matter.  Turning to the tales of another anicent civilization, consider this: According to the Mayans, none of us have got more than the next four years ahead of us anyway.

Personally, I would take that as a possible cue to just enjoy the upcoming new Washington D.C. scene as much as possible.  It should be interesting, if nothing else.  In the meantime, find personal happiness and fulfillment in yourself and the ones you love.  You’ll be amazed at how much bad news and bad times you can weather, whether or not your candidate wound up sitting in the Oval Office.

And if the whole world does come crashing to an end in 2012, you might see me taking a guitar and a couple of bottles of wine and riding a bicycle up to the nearest scenic hillside.  I’ll strum a few songs, make a toast and sip long from memories for the last moments.

Anyone who wants to join me is welcome.

When it comes to power, Terry Britt thinks most politicians are like newborn babies: An enormous appetite on one end and no sense of responsibility on the other.  You can reach him at terrybritt@hotmail.com.