Is it time to allow Minnesotans to buy liquor on Sundays?

Yes, blue laws are antiquated.

We’ve been having a conversation on this very topic at MPR’s Insight Now.

The claim by an alcohol trade organization that Minnesota would gain $10 million annually if they allowed Sunday liquor sales met with skepticism by some of you in our conversation on the merits of lifting the ban. @Charlie just doesn’t buy the math.

Others at Insight Now see the blue law as a remnant of religious doctrine or even as a throwback to Scandinavian roots. And you might be surprised by the Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association’s reason for keeping the ban in place.

Yes

Heck yeah! We already can buy liquor on Sunday anyway, we just have to find a bar for it on that day.

People who live in Southern MN drive to Iowa to buy alcohol on Sundays just as people drive to WI around here. Keep the money and tax revenue in this state, I say! Even if it’s not $10 million as mentioned earlier, it’ll be more than zero. With a budget deficit as large as we have right now, any income generation should be welcomed.

Also, having lived in Iowa for 7 years, you can go to the grocery store and buy ANY type of liquor – beer, wine, hard liquor – 7 days a week. The only time you couldn’t buy liquor was between 2am (when the bars closed) and 6am. Seems to work pretty well for that state! Why not MN?

How would Sunday sales increase the market for liquor as opposed to just bringing sales forward. If the State thinks that Sunday sales increases market share, that could be a mistake.

Sunday sales would mean increase part time employment for workers, or less free time for store owners.

Yes! As Carolyn mentioned that we can go to Wisconsin and Iowa, having lived near North Dakota for several years, we will find a way to buy liquor on Sunday anyway. Better that people buy liquor to drink at home than go to the bar and drive home.

Yes, the law that forces liquor stores to stay closed on Sundays is outdated and is a legacy of our extreme religous past. It’s time to move forward and start collecting that Sunday revenue that other nearby states are getting from us. Besides, how ridiculous is it that you can’t go to the liquor store and pick up a few beers on Superbowl Sunday?

Yes! I will miss the occasional Sunday afternoon drives to Hudson, WI for beer we forgot to buy on Saturday! But I think we should keep those tax dollars here in Minnesota. It’s a no brainer.

Oh my stars. YES!

Yes.. This and EVERY other blue law should be repealed. Not because the state needs money, but because they seem unconstitutional assuming the basis for these laws is the Christian rule of ‘keeping the Sabbath holy’. “Freedom of Religion” should also mean “Freedom FROM Religion”, in my humble opinion.

Yes, If you can drink it on Sundays, you should be allowed to buy it on Sundays

Yes, plain and simple. If liquor store owners dont want to work on Sundays, put out the “closed” sign. Keep your laws off my booze.

Yes, of course, the blue law should be repealed. But the question wrongly implies that up to this very moment the state of Minnesota has acted properly by favoring the scribblings of an ancient Jewish religion over its citizens’ right to contract. If we repeal this law, let’s do so in recognition of the fact that religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, and that it, therefore, should never be allowed to infect the process of contemporary law-making.

yes because it is a revenue source for the liquor business-maybe open at 11am!

Yes, what a stupid law. Although it’s passing should have nothing to do with wanting to gather revenue, but just out of principle and practicality.

It’s OK for me to drink it on Sunday, but god forbid I buy it.

It’s a lot like Hemp, we can buy it and use it, but don’t you dare grow it! It doesn’t make sense and is immensely impractical.

Yes! This should definitely be appealed. We should also be able to buy alcohol in grocery stores.

Yes – I need some sedation when I watch the Vikes on Sundays! I guess in a couple years it won’t matter.

#1. I think we have bigger fish to fry.

#2. If you can’t plan head ONE day.. perhaps you should be dry.

Keep it as is and make some real decisions.

∑

DTOM

oh, my, this is way overdue; and while they are at it they can let grocery stores sell wine and beer too

Of course! These blue laws are an anachronism!

Let’s see, no background checks for gun sales and liquor sales on Sundays. Seems the GOP has their priorities in order…

YES. it’s about time. religion-based laws should no longer be on the books. if we get more money, great; but that alone should not be the reason. also allow alcohol in grocery stores.

i do not drink alcoholic beverages at all. i do not promote or condone alcohol abuse. yet this law is simply ridiculous. get rid of it.

Sure and cars too but not at the same time 🙂

With work schedules what they are, it would be nice to shop for a car on Sunday. Evenings and Saturdays make it tough.

I just enjoy shopping for wine and that seems like a nice Sunday activity sometimes. Why not?

They both seem like silly laws.

I would make the following changes:

* allow liquor-store sales on Sunday

* eliminate the after 10am prohibition of alcohol sales (at restaurants) on sunday

* liquor stores should be allow to operate w/ the same hours as a bar–if they want to close earlier that’s their option

* eliminate 3.2% beer (it serves no purpose)

* allow liquor to be sold anywhere (e.g. a grocery store)

* eliminate the beer-wine license; either you have a license to sell liquor or you don’t

* lower the drinking age to 18 (to be consistent w/ tobacco sales and gambling rules)

If the issue is really about revenue generation we should not only eliminate all Blue Law policies we should also lift the tax exemption status on all religious organizations.

Yes for the time being, I have to drink on Sunday because the Vikings are on my TV.

Go PACKERS!

I fail to see how this will have any significant increase in liquor sales and a tax on those sales. This will not cause an increase in the purchase of alcohol. Alcohol is available six days a week and has been for decades. People know it and have adjusted their behavior accordingly.

This issue has come up before and it has often been the liquor stores that have resisted it. All it means is that they will have to be open an additional day each week to sell the same amount of alcohol. But they will increase their costs with additional staff, only to reduce their overall profit margin.

Now, if you want to sell alcohol on Sundays because you think that it is unethical to limit the days at all, I can at least listen to that. But don’t try and sell it as a way to increase sales and therefore taxes on those sales.

Aside from the fact that this no-sale on Sunday is the dumbest outdated law on the books, I seem to be able to get by and have enough beer on Sunday. Especially during football season. On Saturday I pick up some extra beer for Sunday. I call it my “Holy Beer”.

Another thought. Seeing how our society is becoming more and more secular; prayer in schrools, LAWSUIT!, Nativity scene in a park, LAWSUIT! Mentioning God or Jesus as a football game or graduation ceremony, LAWSUIT! And yet it’s illegal to sell beer on the Christian sabbath. Am I the only one who sees the hypocrisy here?

Yes, yes, yes!

If they need a government-mandated day off, let it be Wednesday.

I can’t accept that Minnesota is more uptight in this regard than North Dakota.

Given that alcohol costs millions in dollars and lives each year … a reasonable trade-off might be to legalize Cannabis/Hemp/Ganja/Marijuana (which has killed no one). People should have a safer alternative that doesn’t ruin (or end) lives.

I’m not much of a drinker. Alcohol is one of my least favorite substances. On a rare occasion that I’ve wanted to buy a bottle of red wine on a Sunday I would remember that silly blue law, and that I’d rather toke up instead.

Legalization of the world’s most useful and versatile plant, Cannabis/Hemp/Ganja/Marijuana, is extremely overdue.

Please watch The Union:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9077214414651731007#

and consider:

Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp, and playing my Hohner harmonica. – Abraham Lincoln, U.S. President, from a letter written by Lincoln during his presidency to the head of the Hohner Harmonica Company in Germany

Prohibition… goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes… A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded. – Abraham Lincoln

Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere! – George Washington, U.S. President

The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world. – Carl Sagan

Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the country.

– Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President

Some of my finest hours have been spent on the back of my veranda, smoking hemp and observing as far as the eye can see. – Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President

If the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” don’t include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn’t worth the hemp it was written on.

– Terence McKenna

We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption. – John Adams, U.S. President

Why use up the forests which were centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of the hemp fields?

– Henry Ford

Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could. – William F. Buckley, Jr

‎The anti-marijuana campaign is a cancerous tissue of lies, undermining law enforcement, aggravating the drug problem, depriving the sick of needed help, and suckering well-intentioned conservatives and countless frightened parents. – William F. Buckley, 1983

Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marihuana in private for personal use… Therefore, I support legislation amending Federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce of marihuana. – Jimmy Carter, U.S. President: Message to Congress, August 2, 1977.

‎After two years of doctor-and-patient testimony, the D.E.A.s chief administrative law judge, Francis L. Young, ruled that ‘marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substance known to man’. – Nick Jones

“Herb is the healing of a nation, alcohol is the destruction.” – Bob Marley.

That is not a drug. It’s a leaf. – Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California

“I think we consume far more dangerous drugs that are legal: cigarette smoking, nicotine and alcohol. I feel they cause much more devastating effects physically. We need to lift the prohibition on marijuana.” former Surgeon General of the United States, Joycelyn Elders voicing her support for legalization of marijuana

The criminalization of the world’s most useful and versatile plant, Cannabis/Hemp/Marijuana/Ganja, was Unconstitutional … a crime against humanity and nature. ~ DNA

‎”The war may not be quite over but any stigma still left lingering around cannabis consumption today is largely restricted to out of date and increasingly unenforced pieces of legislation. So indelibly stamped on our culture has cannabis become that it must now rank as the most popular and controversial plant on the planet.” – Nick Jones

The war on drugs has been an utter failure. We need to rethink and decriminalize our nation’s marijuana laws. – Barack Obama, U.S. President

Yes we should change the law. It just makes good sense and serves no useful purpose. It makes criminals out of people who find a way to get there wine, beer and spirits anyway even if they don’t live near a border state that does sell on Sundays.

Sunday sales should be allowed.

Cheers,

Steve

Yes, it is a religion-based law and therefore inappropriate for our (supposedly) secular government.