Should liquor stores lose their license just because they contribute to alcoholism?

tinfoil said:
Exactly. This helps nobody qnd possibly endqngers the public by creating the circumstances that lead to known alcoholics taking to the road. Way to.go, libtards
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Lame excuse. The sole reason for the existence of those stores is to make profits on the mortality of a population they know has a genetic propensity for addiction. They know it. You should.
 
USFREEDOM911 said:
Just more liberal snowflake FAKE NEWS. :good4u:
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I know, I know. Unlike you, who prefers to remain painfully and willfully ignorant, I did some research on the Pine Ridge Reservation. I already knew about the genetic predisposition to alcoholism by Native Americans. Almost everybody is aware of that. You, however, wish to remain chronically ignorant.

No antidote for your stupid pill addiction.
 
Bill said:
State & counties(in some states) can control/limit alcohol & sales but if the ppl are addicted that isn't going to stop them from consuming is it..??
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in Michigan it is up to municipalities....the town I live in was "dry" until sometime after 2000.....of course the nearest place to buy beer was three miles away so it didn't matter that much......most places restrict Sundays to beer and wine only.....
 
Bill said:
LINCOLN — A state liquor board took the unprecedented step Wednesday of voting to deny the renewal of the liquor licenses of four beer stores in Whiteclay, Nebraska.

The Nebraska Liquor Control Commission voted 3-0 to deny the licenses of the stores. One commissioner said that law enforcement was “woefully inadequate” to allow liquor sales there.

“We were appalled by some of the attitudes of Sheridan County officials that they don’t have a problem there. We found that to be bogus,” said Bob Batt of Omaha, the chairman of the liquor board.

People in the standing-room-only audience in a tiny meeting room at the State Office Building applauded and hugged after the vote was taken.

“A dark cloud has been lifted over the State of Nebraska,” said John Maisch, an Oklahoma attorney whose documentary film about Whiteclay reignited a movement to shut down the stores.

The lawyer for the beer stores, Andy Snyder of Scottsbluff, said he was already working on an appeal of Wednesday’s decision.

“This is more proof that this is politically motivated and not based on the facts,” Snyder said of the vote.

The four stores’ liquor licenses expire April 30. A court appeal would suspend the closing of the stores by several months pending a final ruling.

The Whiteclay beer stores have been criticized for years for contributing to alcohol-related problems on the adjacent Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where alcohol possession and sales are legally prohibited.

Whiteclay, an unincorporated village of fewer than 10 residents near the Nebraska state line, has been called the “Skid Row of the Plains” because the stores sell the equivalent of 3.5 million cans of beer a year.

Almost all sales are to residents of the impoverished reservation, where alcoholism is rampant and an estimated one in four children suffer from some form of fetal alcohol syndrome. In Whiteclay, vagrants openly drink, urinate and pass out on the streets.

Before voting, the three members of the commission each outlined their rationale for denying the licenses.

Commissioner Bruce Bailey of Lincoln cited a number of provisions in state law that he felt were not being upheld in Whiteclay. He cited the 150 ambulance calls from the Pine Ridge Reservation to Whiteclay, reports of public intoxication and sexual assaults of young girls, and the “moving” testimony of Bruce and Marsha BonFleur, leaders of the Lakota Hope Ministry that ministers to Whiteclay’s street people.

Batt said the basis of the ruling was the lack of adequate law enforcement in the area, which is a condition for issuing a liquor license. The other commissioners, Bailey and Janice Wiebusch of Kearney, concurred.

Batt said that public health and safety was being threatened. Shutting down the beer stores, he said, won’t solve all the liquor-related problems on the Pine Ridge Reservation, but will make alcohol less accessible and end the “catalyst” for a lot of the problems.

In the end, an impassioned Batt, whose family founded Nebraska Furniture Mart, said that the federal government needs to step up to address the “benign neglect” it has shown to the poverty, high unemployment and high rates of suicide and alcohol-related crime on the reservation.

“It’s almost like assisted suicide,” Batt said, calling on the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the U.S. Department of Interior and ultimately President Donald Trump to intervene.

“If we can fix countries all over the world, we need to fix the poorest county in the United States,” he said. “These are human beings. They are really suffering.”

Liquor license renewals are usually a formality, but this year, the liquor commission ordered the four stores to undergo a “long form” application process, which is essentially akin to reapplying for their licenses. The commission expressed concern that law enforcement in the unincorporated village was inadequate to allow continued alcohol sales.

The Sheridan County Board, after a public hearing in January, recommended that the liquor licenses be renewed, stating that patrols by the county sheriff and Nebraska State Patrol were adequate.

That set the stage for a marathon hearing on April 6 at the State Capitol, where Sheridan County officials again maintained that law enforcement was sufficient. Members of the Lakota Hope Ministry and a documentary filmmaker, however, testified that many laws go unenforced in Whiteclay, and that response times to 911 calls are so slow that people don’t call for help.

The commission took the matter under advisement and received written, final arguments last week.

Only once before has the commission voted to deny a liquor license in Whiteclay. And that decision, a decade ago, was ultimately overturned in court.

Whiteclay has had four liquor stores for many years, and some families have held the licenses going as far back as 1982. The current holders are the Arrowhead Inn, the Jumping Eagle Inn, D&S Pioneer Service and State Line Liquor.

The liquor store owners have argued that they run legal businesses, and that, if anything, law enforcement has improved in recent years.

They also maintain that closing down the stores will not solve liquor woes on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Liquor purchases, they say, will just be transferred to bootleggers or to other communities farther away, thus increasing the risks of deadly drunk-driving accidents.
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We should revisit this in two years. I'm willing to bet that the three state liquor board members who voted for this will own liquor licenses then. This isn't about public safety or health, it's about money.
 
domer76 said:
It's legal, but it's not a right. And you are correct, the help they need is not 4 liquor stores feet away from their land whose sole business is to sell a product to a population they know has a genetic addiction to it.
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You & I wouldn't do it but obviously others will....
 
domer76 said:
It's legal, but it's not a right. And you are correct, the help they need is not 4 liquor stores feet away from their land whose sole business is to sell a product to a population they know has a genetic addiction to it.
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By this reasoning Boston should be dry. Wisconsin and Minnesota too.
 
PostmodernProphet said:
in Michigan it is up to municipalities....the town I live in was "dry" until sometime after 2000.....of course the nearest place to buy beer was three miles away so it didn't matter that much......most places restrict Sundays to beer and wine only.....
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Wasn't aware of dry municipalities in Michigan.. Why did they make the change after 2,000??
 
Bill said:
Wasn't aware of dry municipalities in Michigan.. Why did they make the change after 2,000??
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it comes up for a vote periodically.......2000 wasn't significant, I just couldn't remember the exact date but knew it was sometime after 2000.......just looked it up.....the last dry city is no longer dry....
Oak Park had been dry since its establishment in 1945. A vote on July 15, 2013, allows up to 20 restaurants to obtain tavern licenses, but they could not sell spirits or mixed drinks.[90] On May 5, 2015 the citizens of Oak Park voted to allow mixed drinks to be sold at businesses within city limits; in addition to beer and wine which was previously allowed.
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apparently the majority of states have some dry communities....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dry_communities_by_U.S._state
 
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domer76 said:
Nope, not by that reasoning.

Move along now
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Absolutely using that reasoning means Boston and the upper Midwest should be dry. Indians aren't the only ones with genetic "uniqueness" for lack of a better word...unless you're making the case that white people can control themselves and savages can't. Is that where you're going with this prog?
 
Guille said:
Absolutely using that reasoning means Boston and the upper Midwest should be dry. Indians aren't the only ones with genetic "uniqueness" for lack of a better word...unless you're making the case that white people can control themselves and savages can't. Is that where you're going with this prog?
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Nope. Not by that reasoning.

Dismissed.
 
Judge lets Nebraska beer stores near reservation stay open

A judge on Thursday overturned a decision that had barred four Nebraska stores from selling beer next to an officially dry American Indian reservation in South Dakota that struggles with alcohol-related problems.
The ruling was a setback for those who want to close the stores in Whiteclay, an unincorporated village of nine residents that sells millions of cans each year next to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Critics blame the stores for widespread alcoholism and high rates of fetal alcohol syndrome on the reservation, which is home to the Oglala Lakota Tribe.

The Nebraska Liquor Control Commission ruled last week that it would not renew the stores' licenses, citing a lack of adequate law enforcement in the area. Whiteclay is known as a spot where people drink, sleep and sometimes fight in public.
Lancaster County District Court Judge Andrew Jacobsen agreed with the stores' arguments that the decision by state regulators was arbitrary and unreasonable and ran afoul of previous Nebraska Supreme Court rulings.

The liquor control commission "is vested with discretion in the granting or denial of retail liquor licenses, but it may not act arbitrarily or unreasonably," Jacobsen said in the ruling.

The court has said the state must automatically renew licenses when a licensee is qualified to hold one, when the premises haven't changed and the premises are still suitable for sales. Jacobsen said the commission failed to show that any of those conditions was not met.

The commission, represented by the Nebraska attorney general's office, can appeal Thursday's ruling to the Nebraska Supreme Court. A spokeswoman for the attorney general said state attorneys are reviewing the decision.

"Going into this, we were confident that if somebody looked at the facts and applied those facts to the law, we would be successful," Andrew Snyder, an attorney for the beer stores, said Thursday.

A spokesman for the Oglala Lakota Tribe in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, said he had not yet seen the ruling and needed to consult with the tribe's president before commenting.

John Maisch, a former Oklahoma alcohol regulator who has advocated closing the stores, said he was confident the courts would eventually uphold the commission's decision.

"Nebraskans see suffering in Whiteclay and want it to stop," he said. "Taxpayers see hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent on law enforcement in this tiny, unincorporated town and want those dollars spent elsewhere. That will happen in due time."

Frank LaMere, an activist who has spent decades trying to shutter the stores, was "hugely disappointed" by the ruling.

"I apologize as a Nebraskan to my Oglala relatives," said LaMere, a member of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. "There are many of us here who do see the death, the dying and the devastation that the judge just ignored under the color of law."
 
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