Ms. Gregoire:
Today I was unpleasantly reminded about how inconvenient, backwards, and bureaucratically wasteful Washington State’s liquor laws are.
Since I’ve lived here (10+ years) the State’s laws and policies have been a constant source of aggravation for me and almost everyone I know. I can see no good reason whatsoever why the State keeps a monopoly on liquor stores that keep terrible hours. For that matter, why aren’t they open on Sundays? Is it some sort of archaic and puritan kickback to Christianity?
I find it completely frustrating that I, a taxpaying and law abiding citizen, can’t impulsively buy liquor whenever I want let alone on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Other states allow the privatization of liquor sales and they seem to be doing just fine. In California I can walk into a grocery store at midnight and buy a fifth of Jack Daniels if I so please and they don’t seem to be overrun with wild drunks. In New York City I can purchase tequila at four in the morning and people seem to still like that place. In Spain a 10 year old girl can purchase and drink a bottle of wine without their infrastructure falling apart. So why, in this otherwise progressive and forward-thinking state, are the liquor laws in league with the dark ages?
I don’t expect much… actually I expect you’ll do nothing at all. Surely, in your eyes, you’ve got bigger things to worry about, but in my registered voter’s eyes you seem to spend most of your well-paid time imposing on my freedom.
Sincerely,
Wylie Wenger
Olympia
P.S. I’d like to also thank you for the recently increased taxes on tobacco and alcohol. I loved it when you made me stand in the cold rain to smoke, but now that it costs more it’s even better. I hope you use that extra $225 million of my money for something really necessary like a new stadium for a privately owned and extremely profitable sports franchise that gets named after a separate, but equally profitable corporation. Whatever you do, though, please don’t legislate any sort of state-funded healthcare system. We wouldn’t want citizens being able to see doctors or anything. Before you knew it we’d end up like Canada where people are generally happy, there’s not a lot of crime, and art is funded by the State. God forbid that should ever happen here.
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