Nashville Debates Single-Bottle Beer Ban

by Mike Pomranz, Posted Jan 13th 2009 @ 10:01AM

A homeless man begs next to a bagged single beer.

Last week, a number of news sources reported that Nashville, Tennessee was the latest city debating a single-bottle beer ban. Similar bans already exist in major cities like Washington, D.C. and Detroit, and similar proposals have been discussed in recent years in places such as Seattle.

Many states have strict laws regarding the sale of alcoholic beverages, and plenty of dry counties and cities exist across the U.S. where alcohol sales are prohibited entirely. But what sets apart Nashville's proposed ban and others like it are that these single-bottle bans typically target only specific neighborhoods and specific types of beer. Most single-bottle bans provide loopholes for upmarket craft and imported beers or fancier beer sellers such as Whole Foods, leading many to label these laws as economic discrimination.

As a number of anti-bottle ban editorials -- such as this one from the Nashville City Paper -- point out, the activities these bans seek to curb such as public drinking and littering are already illegal. Banning single-bottle sales simply attempts to shift burden away from law enforcement at the expense of small business owners who rely on single-bottle beer sales to help earn a living and honest low-income drinkers who may not have the money to regularly shell out for a six pack. However, Nashville city council member Mike Jameson who supports the general concept behind such bans responds, "We can spend millions of dollars on retaining the necessary police force to enforce these laws or we can pass one ordinance that's incredibly easy to enforce."

Sure, single-bottle beer bans aren't the end of the world, but economic discrimination can be a serious issue, one that encroaches on all of our personal rights. For instance, in 2006, when Seattle was debating their proposed ban, The Seattle Times reported, "The city's list of banned products was reduced to 28 in the final proposal. [A number of] beers were removed from the list, and one additional beer, Red Dog, was added."

Somewhere, in a proverbial ivory tower, a group of people drew, then redrew, the line of what beers could and could not be sold, eventually deciding that Red Dog didn't make the cut. Do we really need our local governments deciding which beers deserve to be sold in single servings and which do not?

Filed Under: Drink Recipes
Tags: beer, beer ban, Nashville, single bottle, single bottle beer ban, speakin suds

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

1-13-2009 @10:33AM Pyrofish said... Classic case of more laws to try to enforce the laws already in place. I despise that.

Although the intent of the loophole beers probably wasn't economic discrimination. Finding a 6 pack of Chimay Blue label would be hard enough, but at the $9 a bottle I usually find it for... that's a $54 6 pack. That was probably the intent.
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1-13-2009 @5:34PM Samme said... It is clearly discrimination. Same great minds behind this are the ones behind the idea that crack cocaine should have sentences several times longer than powder cocaine. It's the same drug, but powder cocaine users are generally rich so they shouldn't go to jail for the same time for the same crime right?

If you can sell one bottle of expensive beer, you should be able to sell one bottle of cheap beer. Personally I love the places that let you mix-your-own-six so I can sample several different flavors.
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1-14-2009 @12:31PM Jack Torsonier said... I like how the Slashfood headline and "blurb" insinuates that we Bible-belters in Nashville are trying to do away with all single-beer sales in our fair city.

There's a bill before the Metro-Nashville council that would ban single-beer sales within a defined area in the "downtown" part of Nashville -- near historic 2nd Avenue, the Ryman Auditorium, and Broadway (near Tootsie's and other famous honky tonks).

This area just happens to be an area in which a lot of drunken vagrants happen to congregate ... no doubt 'cause they know that it's frequented by tourists. Said vagrants can often be seen sucking on tall-boy cans of Busch and Colt .45 ... before begging for money, or while begging for money. (I can't tell you how many times I've been harrassed by these drunken SOBs on my way to a Nashville Predators game.)

For the record, I support the single-beer-ban-in-Downtown-Nashville-ban. And I think Slashfood needs to get its facts straight before it goes a-dissing. So there.
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1-14-2009 @1:01PM Mike Pomranz said... Hey, Jack. Thanks for your comment, though I respectfully disagree that I implied that Nashville is seeking to ban single-bottle sales throughout the entire city. As I said above "these single-bottle bans typically target only specific neighborhoods." Linguistically speaking, the headline is accurate because the city of Nashville is debating a ban, even if it is just for specific neighborhoods. Also, I never meant to imply that the people of Nashville are "Bible-belters." I wouldn't consider Washington, DC, Detroit or Seattle part of the bible belt (the other cities mentioned above). Still, I appreciate the opportunity to clarify your point for other readers who might have been misled.

Lastly, I don't think you deserve to be harassed by vagrants, but if the area where these beggars congregate is so concentrated, and since there are already laws on the books against public drinking, etc., shouldn't it be easy enough to enforce the laws as they are without adding additional single-bottle bans? I'm not taking a side per se, just food for thought (pun intended).
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