Liquor Control Always Gets Their (Wo)man

Looks like Megan McArdle has had a run in with Pennsylvania’s puritannical Liquor Police in her past.  The continuing existence of the LCB has always been a curiosity to me.  I’ve never met anyone who likes the system, yet it persists. LCB has their own set of agents who are charged with enforcing Pennsylvania’s byzantine laws regulating alcoholic beverages.

Megan went to school just across the street from me, at about the same time too.  LCB agents love staking out University City drinkeries, becuase let me tell you, there’s no problem facing the City of Philadelphia that’s more serious than 19 and 20 year olds having a beer with their friends.  You might get mugged on the way back to your apartment, but we’ll spare no expense and trouble to make sure you don’t dare risk “uncontrollable vomiting”

On the other side of the coin, I’ve never heard of LCB agents breaking down anyone’s door and shooting their dogs.  So maybe by modern law enforcement standards, I shouldn’t complain.

5 thoughts on “Liquor Control Always Gets Their (Wo)man”

  1. “uncontrollable vomiting”

    if you could control it, wouldn’t you normally just keep it down?

  2. Nomen,

    I made the same point to Sebastian on IM. I wondered who has these super powers to control vomiting. I know that regardless of cause, it’s not something I can really control.

  3. Controllable vomiting is the kind where once you puke, you keep your mouth closed and swallow!

  4. The joys of going to college in Hoboken – the local distributors would cheerfully send a grade-school kid up to the campus with a box of booze (and while they didn’t deliver to the Freshmen boys’ dorm, the main entrance to the grad students’ dorm was all of 10 ft away…)

    OTOH, Campus Security would confiscate any “alcohol mass storage device” (and render it empty later).

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