This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, August 23rd, 2018.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The weird patchwork that make up state-level alcohol laws is still influenced by prohibition, the failed

experiment that will mark its 100th anniversary in short order. As we approach

this unhappy anniversary, Jeremy Horpendahl, Professor of Economics at the University of Central Arkansas

describes the particularly ugly bootlegers and Baptist coalitions

that form when counties are able to make the final decision about wet versus dry.

Following the end of prohibition, a lot of states were slow to make it easy for people to access alcohol in at the very least in Kentucky and I assume

some other states if you go to a pharmacy you can buy liquor which is this long

standing deal that pharmacies had worked out with their

states saying hey we were able to sell alcohol during prohibition as medicine or with medicines dissolved in the alcohol, we don't, we're not

going to give that up now that prohibition has ended and so he walked into a

pharmacy in Kentucky and other states and you can buy liquor.

Right.

So I'm from a dry county.

So am I. It's no longer a dry county.

The county I grew up in was no longer a dry county.

But it seems weird.

And this place had a college campus right there. So you would think wow of all the pressures that would lead a county to say

We're gonna we're gonna let you have beer and wine and liquor served at a restaurant.

Oh my goodness, that would have been amazing for my parents when I was in high school.

But that should have happened decades ago.

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