During the original Prohibition, banning alcohol sales enticed people to drink more.
In the 1920s, ‘nobody went to a speakeasy to have a beer- you went to have 10 beers’.
When drinking is made difficult, people tend to take full advantage of the opportunity to drink.
Dry counties have relative success in cutting down on crime and public health problems, but they unwittingly promote binge drinking.
Deprived of the chance to learn their limits, the residents of dry counties can easily find a liquor store or bar in another jurisdiction.
Unfortunately, since dry towns are in rural counties, there are not many options for taxis or public transportation, especially late at night; when people drive to get drunk, they have to drive vast distances, and they drive back while dangerously intoxicated.
When Angelina County, Texas, decided to go wet in 2006, voters had this in mind.
Figures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that people in the state’s dry counties had a fatality rate in alcohol-related accidents of 6.8 per 10,000 people over five years, which was more than three times higher than the rate in the state’s wet counties: 1.9 per 10,000 people. The less distance people have to drive to get their alcohol, the less likely a driving under the influence fatality is.
Public health advocates also fear that dry counties can become havens for dangerous drugs. Researchers at the University of Louisville found a higher concentration of methamphetamine labs in Kentucky’s dry counties. Similarly, a 2005 study in Texas found that drug-related crimes occurred more frequently in counties where alcohol could not be purchased; researchers concluded that alcohol and illegal drugs “are substitutes in consumption,” and that restrictions on alcohol can act in such a way that the rise of deviant behaviors negates the very purpose behind those restrictions. The study, published in the Journal of Law and Economics, found that Texas counties that went from dry to wet experienced a 14 percent drop in drug-related deaths as people used alcohol instead of more dangerous substances.
Economists, too, fret about what dry regulations can do to a town’s budget. When Winona, Texas, voted to legalize alcohol transactions in 2009, the town’s tax revenue jumped from $2,000 a month to $11,000. In Arkansas, a report published by the University of Arkansas estimated that if Faulkner, Saline, and Craighead counties became wet, “the three counties would experience over $10 million in additional economic activity.”
But for Larry Page of the Arkansas Faith and Ethics Council, the research and statistics don’t mean much. He admits that the wet counties of America probably have him beat when it comes to empirical evidence, but when he looks at the quality of life in the dry counties under his purview, he is satisfied that prohibition works.
