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The Interesting Battle over Alcohol in Arkansas

2 min read

The Los Angeles Times offers a look at the battle being waged over Arkansas’ alcohol amendment that, if approved, would make the entire state wet, and the inconceivable allies it has formed.

Package stores have forged an unlikely coalition here in the heart of the Bible Belt, joining preachers pounding their pulpits against the Arkansas Alcohol Beverage Amendment, which they say will spread the evils of drink.

“This fight has made for some unusual alliances,” said Brian Richardson, chairman of the Citizens for Local Rights, which opposes the amendment. “The package stores and religious moral objectors — they’re certainly strange bedfellows.”

The article highlights an array of the religious aspects at play in the battle, and speaks to a few on either side of the amendment, including a Jasper preacher who sees the amendment causing an influx of drunk driving and an amendment supporter who says she was called “a tool of the devil” in a letter to the editor in the Newton County Times.

The article, by John M. Glionna, also centers on Mary Jackson, the owner of 67 Liquor in Possum Grape, who is worried about passage of the amendment and the effects it would have on her popular county-line store.

“It’ll hurt me,” Jackson tells the L.A. Times.

One of her customers, who drives from 40 miles away to buy his liquor, told Glionna he won’t support the amendment.

“Hell, no,” he said. “I like to stay off the radar. That’s why I live out here.”

To read the full L.A. Times article, click here.

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