Just to save a little face here, there are plenty of educated and enlightened areas in Alabama. For instance, Huntsville has more rocket scientists and engineers per capita than almost anywhere else in the US. That said, there certainly are large wastelands of backwoods and backwards thinking people in this state.
These laws won’t stand for ever. I imagine in the next 5-10 years we will get rid of the stupidest laws - most importantly the anti-homebrewing and bottle size law. I moved here in '93 from PA and back then the laws were even worse. It was only in the last 3 years or so that the abv limit was raised from 6% to 12% (or, it may be 13%, can’t recall.) So things are changing. No offense to the homebrewers out there, but I hope the bottle law changes first (no beer in bottles larger than 12 oz). Homebrewing is pretty easy to hide and well tolerated by most people I’ve ever known and I have never heard of anyone who was actually arrested for homebrewing. I did know one guy who got harassed but he had an article in the LA times which featured his name, face and address. Hell, believe it or not we have homebrewing shops that operate in the open in Huntsville so there’s a blind eye that is turned toward it.
We had a stupid bottle size law in Florida years ago too. Only 8, 12, 16 and 32-or-more ounce containers were allowed. That left out almost all the European beers and all the craft beer bombers. It was mostly a beer distributor’s law, which was only changed because of active homebrewers in the state and one common sense senator. Finding a sponsor is the first step I would think.
Front National = French Fascists (well, “allegedly”) Of course there’s a healthy dose of hyperbole there, but the guys in that audio just sounded so… ehhhh.
One of the more telling comments is right near the beginning: “…up to 100 gallons per year, without any licensure, oversight from any government entity, who can transport it […] who’s going to monitor that??” --Bill sponsor Mac McCutcheon
Who says there needs to be oversight?? You don’t have to live in Vermont to believe that less = more in government. These guys have much more pressing concerns in Alabama.
Listening to them, I just keep waiting for “now I ain’t no fancy big-city lawyer…” Any minute now…
There was a shop open in Utah years before homebrewing was legal (which was just last year). I did read an article that at one point, an overzealous police department was following customers home :
Every state has politicians who sound like idiots, but usually only 1 or 2 at a time.
When I lived in NE they had Ernie Chambers. Here in IA we have Steve King in Washington even as I type. There is always some group of “got elected by good-'ol boy network” hick from the back woods type in every state. It seems that AL has a lot of back woods.
Hopefully the sponsors of the bill that got voted down keep chipping away at it.
