Easter has come and gone, and Lent is over, so people who gave up alcohol can imbibe again. But if they live in Virginia, it’ll take extra effort to check their local bar’s happy hour specials.
A nonsensical Virginia law bans bars and restaurants from advertising their happy hour drink prices. Outside their walls, bars can advertise food specials and happy hour times, and they can list which drinks they feature. But woe betide a bar that accompanies this helpful information with details about price. They are also not allowed to be inventive with their marketing language and must refer only to their “happy hour” and “drink specials.” Don’t bother to dram up “Wine Wednesdays,” “Tequila Tuesdays,” or “Miller Lite Mondays.” It’s even illegal for an Irish pub to advertise the simple fact that it sells pints of Guinness for $5 from 3 p.m. until 7 p.m.
A law banning misleading or dishonest happy hour ads would be one thing, but a law that bans you from telling the truth is ridiculous, even before one considers its trammeling of free speech.
Thankfully, the Pacific Legal Foundation is fighting to get a federal judge to rule that Virginia, which boasts that it is for lovers, can be for cocktail lovers too. On behalf of Geoff Tracy (also known as Chef Geoff), the foundation filed a lawsuit on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
A judge should swiftly rule in the plaintiffs’ favor, and the state of Virginia should not appeal the ruling. Or Virginia legislators should just take the law off the books altogether.
Virginia’s ban isn’t the worst state law on alcohol. Eleven states ban happy hour altogether, infringing on entrepreneurs’ freedom to operate their business as they see fit. Maybe they could set up an “unhappy hour” for libertarians who want to weep at the extent of government overreach — just a thought.
In Utah, “Zion curtains” until recently separated bartenders and customers, because apparently watching your own drink get made is a threat to society. In Indiana, gas stations and convenience stores can’t sell beer out of refrigerators. In Ohio, “no [alcohol] advertisement shall represent, portray, or make any reference to Santa Claus.” C’mon! Seriously? How d’you think he got his ruddy complexion?
Until 2008, sangria was banned in Virginia restaurants. Until 2011, the state banned billboard advertisements for booze (which ended after a free-speech lawsuit brought by billboard business Lamar). Until last month, dogs could not accompany their owners if they were visiting a brewery or a winery. And not only are Virginia bars also required to serve food, they also have to make $45 in food sales for every $55 they make selling liquor-based drinks.
To this day, consumers and restaurants can purchase liquor only from the state-owned Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority, or ABC, store.
To be sure, these laws are enacted mostly by individual states rather than at the federal level, a small mercy for which we should be thankful. But there are also silly federal laws about alcohol: The federal ban on home distilling is ridiculous, especially since homebrewing and home winemaking is legal. In his tomb at Mount Vernon, George Washington, once the largest whiskey producer in the country, is shaken rather than stirred by this nonsense.
Some regulation of alcohol is reasonable, but laws that stifle free speech and free enterprise are bad for the spirits, by which we mean whiskey, gin, rum, and brandy, as well as entrepreneurial spirits. At every level of government, lawmakers should take a sober look at the baloney about booze that is in their statute books and take action to allow beer, wine, and liquor to flow freely.
