In California, you can buy hard liquor in the supermarket. In Nevada, Karen and I were leaving early one Sunday morning after a fishing trip and stopped at gas station to fill up. At 7:00 AM on Sunday morning, there were premixed cocktails for sale at the cash register and a few people were sipping on their drinks while playing video poker. Nevada’s my kind of state.

Back East, here in Virginia, just as in my native state of Pennsylvania, an archaic regime going back nearly a hundred years to the days of Prohibition restricts liquor sales to state stores. Selection is inferior, prices are uncompetitive, and they can’t even be bothered to special order brands they don’t customarily carry.

One very good thing coming from electing conservative Republican Bob McDonnell governor is the apparently coming fulfillment of his campaign promise to get the Commonwealth of Virginia to move into the 21st Century and start treating its citizens as adults.

Let’s hope the Governor does not allow bible-thumpers and greedy politicians to stand in the way.

“[N]othing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.”

–Albert Einstein on Alcohol Prohibition, 1921.

To understand that the War on Drugs is bad policy and is not working.

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