Kansas May Join the Modern World
One of the great embarrassments of the wonderful state of Kansas is Kansas University, that friggin' Jayhawk can suck my.. oh wait, that's not what I'm writing about. Let's start over, One of the great embarrassments of the wonderful state of Kansas is 3.2 beer. For those not steeped in the beer purchasing history of Kansas, Kansas sells a kind of demon beer in grocery and convenience stores that does not contain more than 3.2% alcohol by weight (4.0 ABV I had this wrong in the original post). Many Kansans, myself included, don't ever buy beer at the grocery store because of its inferior quality to liquor store beer. Just this past week, I bought a sixer at Cosentino's downtown and felt very strange about even though it was regular strength beer. I've probably bought* beer in a grocery store 5 times now and not one of those occurrences was in the state of Kansas.*My first beer drinking experiences in high school took place because my friends stole beer from the grocery store where they worked. I'm here to tell you that you can get drunk from 3.2 beer, but only if you're tolerance is similar to a 95 pound teen.
It appears that a bill has been presented to the KS legislature to get rid of the 3.2 limit for grocery stores. Finally allowing Kansans to buy regular strength beer in the grocery. Kansas is only one of five states with the ridiculous requirement in place and will soon lose Colorado as one of its brethren as that state is scrapping the law.
As with all cases of government paternalism/intervention this law change will hurt smaller liquor stores that generate most of their revenue from big domestic beer sales. That is a definite cost to the legislation. But, to paraphrase Billie Jean, right is right. The state could maybe loosen some of the more strict rules regarding liquor stores. Perhaps allow wine/beer tastings on liquor store premises or something like that. No doubt some smaller liquor stores would close, but it would be better for the overall industry if we lose the stupid rules.
