Indiana: illogically dry

Indiana’s ban on Sunday alcohol sales is arbitrary, needless and ineffective.
The ban creates more questions than it answers.

For example, what legitimate reason exists to ban alcohol sales exclusively on Sunday? What’s so special about that day? And if you’re going to ban alcohol sales on Sunday, why not ban alcohol consumption on Sunday (or the rest of the week, for that matter)?

What, exactly, is the goal of this law?

All it does is create an unnecessary burden on people who, besides timing, want to make an otherwise perfectly legal purchase. Banning alcohol sales on Sunday has about as much logic behind it as banning the sale of toilet paper between the hours of 2 and 5 p.m. on Thursdays. It simply makes no sense. 

Beyond being completely illogical, it’s also bad for business. It places an unnecessary burden on Indiana businesses, which are arbitrarily banned from making revenue from alcohol sales on the second busiest grocery shopping day of the week, shorting Indiana businesses a substantial amount of revenue each year. 

It’s also laughably easy to get around. For people living a reasonable distance from the border, all it takes is a quick drive into one of our neighboring states (none of whom ban Sunday alcohol sales) to get around the law.

So in effect, every Sunday the state of Indiana is handing each of our neighboring states thousands of dollars of what could be Indiana’s tax revenue because of Indiana’s stubborn attachment to an archaic and outdated law. 

And to top it off, the ban is even ineffective at its only purported goal: reducing the negative effects of alcohol.

Because of a strange loophole in the law, restaurants and bars are still allowed to sell alcohol. If you’re going to have a stupid law, at least make it consistently stupid. 

The Indiana General Assembly should quickly repeal this archaic ban on Sunday alcohol sales.

When the Indiana state representatives in the Interim Study Committee on Alcoholic Beverages Issues meets Oct. 20, we hope they realize that a ban that violates the rights of the vast majority of law-abiding adults in order to avoid adding “an extra day for the risk of selling alcohol to minors” is ineffective, bad for business, irrational and needlessly irritating.

In the middle of this economic recession where Indiana is quickly losing tax revenue, having a needless law that decreases Indiana’s potential tax earnings is simply bad for Indiana.