WET COUNTY, dry county. Dry
county, wet county. We’ve heard
the debate for years around the kitchen table, the corner grocery, and at the office. If a county goes wet, one side argues, all is lost ! Demon Rum will be loosed and debauchery of all kinds will follow. Let a liquor store open down the street, and soon enough you’ll be inundated with women of the night, thugs of every description, and even places that sell disco pants. Why, allow a liquor store nearby, and you can expect LOCUSTS ! the next day. Or is that a pool hall ? Anyway, it’s a bad, bad, bad idea. The other side argues that tax revenue is lost when folks here have to go elswhere to buy booze, and why inconvenience folks who just want to wet their whiskers ? But those arguments are so... boring. It’s so much more fun to hear a sermonizer shouting from a soap box, preferably while thumping the Good Book and generally raising Cain, Abel and the whole biblical cast.
Fun aside, we never understood the notion that living in a wet county somehow contributed to Driving While Intoxicated.
Believe it or not, even inky wretches go to college. We can remember continuing our education in a dry county—and driving 30 minutes to the county line to buy beer.
We also remember—shame on ustaking sips during the trip back. (No matter how smart college kids are, they’re still kids. And think of themselves, if they think at all, as immortal. )
Now comes a report by our own Daniel Nasaw, who committed journalism Sunday. His research covered a five-year span, and it showed that residents in dry counties aren’t any safer from drunks wielding 2, 000-pound missiles than their cousins in wet counties. In fact, according to the story, “an analysis of the data shows that easier access to alcohol coincides with a lower risk of death in an alcoholrelated crash.”
From 2000 to 2004, 4. 2 people for every 10, 000 died in accidents involving a drunk driver in Arkansas’ wet counties. It was 4. 6 per 10, 000 in Arkansas’ dry counties.
How ’bout that ?
So.... Let’s all get wet ?
Not exactly. We like what David Hogue said. He’s a Conway attorney who represents drys in Alcoholic Beverage Control hearings. He said that if the dry county / wet county arguments were just about DWI, then he loses the case. But, “alcoholism, divorces, child abuse. It’s just a domino effect.” Agree or disagree, Mr. Hogue makes a sober point. Lots of folks vote dry because they believe it just adds to the family-friendly atmosphere of their towns. They may have a point.
Marion County will decide in November whether to go wet. (Folks in Clark and Benton counties failed in their attempts to gather enough signatures to get a gowet proposal on the ballot. ) Here’s hoping we can debate this issue on the merits of the case, not scare tactics. Because Arkansans die in alcohol-related car wrecks in greater proportion than almost any other state. Beer and liquor—and other drugs—aren’t helping.
But let’s get those pesky facts right. It turns out you’re statistically not safer from drunk drivers in a dry county.
Whoever has the better case, let’s all be careful out there. Surely we can agree on that point.
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