Booze bills may hurt tourism (Utah) | Salt Lake Tribune

[Ediacara]

Booze bills may hurt tourism

By Christopher Smart
The Salt Lake Tribune

PARK CITY -- Eyes rolled and ears burned as folks in this tourist town learned that their job just got a bit tougher overcoming Utah's reputation as a place with weird liquor laws.

"I'm mortified," Park City Councilwoman Kay Calvert said. "It's just one more thing about Utah to laugh at."

She was referring to two bills recently passed by the Legislature. One forbids pitchers of beer to be served unless at least two people are present. The second reduces the legal limit of blood alcohol from 0.08 to 0.05 if a driver has children in the car and has had a previous alcohol-related conviction.

That's legislating against tourism, Calvert contended. "Utahns need to decide if they want to capture their fair share of the tourist dollars," she said. "This is negative marketing. We advertise ourselves as 40 minutes from the airport with the greatest snow on earth and then we set up all these ridiculous laws. It's embarrassing."

More at the Salt Lake Tribune

[DarkPhenyx]

1. Well, for me anyway...

...I don't have a problem with these two laws.

We have the pitcher law here in NC as well. I don't necessarily like it, as I am not driving when I drink and beer is cheaper by the pitcher, but I understand what they are trying to do. Here in NC you can't even get a pitcher if you have two people at the table, but only one is drinking.

[Occulus]

2. Isn't the Utah state Legislature

heavy with Mormons?

I don't mean to imply anything, I'm just asking.

[matcom]

4. yes, even worse

and i know this because i used to do the purchasing for the Embassy Suites out there.....

the liquor control board is made up ENTIRELY of non-drinking Mormons except ONE.

(well that was how it was back in 94 anyway)

[Sandpiper]

6. Yes it is

And that's precisely why they have goofy liquor laws. For Mormons, consumption of alcohol is a sin. Hence the motivation in their efforts to make alcohol innaccessible to everyone, Mormon or Non-Mormon.

[eyesroll]

3. I spent a week in SLC on business

To drink at the hotel bar, I had to show my key (or else buy a "membership" for $3 or so -- I guess we got complimentary memberships by staying there). It was classified as a private club, and thus could sell whatever it wanted.

Some establishments had "restaurant" licenses, and were subject to other rules. Including, until recently, the restriction that you could only have one drink per adult on the table at any given time. If your second glass of wine came before you'd finished the first, your options were chug, mix if they were the same wine, or surrender your first glass.

(I'm probably getting the terminology wrong.)

And the crazy thing -- nobody I was with got asked for ID at any time. This includes a babyfaced 23-year-old wife of one of the seminar participants.

[dArKeR]

5. 2 things I do: get gas in Neveda and don't take off my nose plug until I

get to Wyoming (and visa versa on the way back.) Mormons make me jump out of my skin!