Nothing drives home the fact that we live in a federalist system like moving to a new state and trying to figure out where and when you can buy alcohol.
In some states, like California, you can buy beer, wine and liquor at the grocery store. In others, you can buy beer at the supermarket but need to make a separate trip to the liquor store to buy wine and hard alcohol. In still others, like Utah, alcoholic beverages can only be purchased at state-run facilities.
A good way to get a bird's-eye-view of the legal booze landscape is to look at what types of alcohol you can and can't buy at your local supermarket. Using information from the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association (NABCA) and other sources, I put together the following map.
Maryland also has a weird situation where counties largely control the administration of liquor laws. There are several supermarkets scattered throughout the state that allow liquor sales but again, these are the exception rather than the rule.
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But paradoxically, allowing supermarket alcohol sales may actually decrease the density of liquor stores in a given geographic area. Supermarket sales often face fierce opposition from mom-and-pop liquor store owners, who argue that they wouldn't be able to compete with large chains and would be driven out of business. Net result? If one supermarket drives, say, three liquor stores out of business, that would mean fewer places to buy alcohol.
A back-of-the-envelope analysis of the state-level data adds some credence to the idea. Researchers recently tallied up the cost to society of excessive drinking — the kind of irresponsible drinking that leads to crime, health problems and early mortality. If you look at the per-capita cost of excessive drinking in each state, and group the states by how they handle supermarket sales, an interesting fact emerges: States that do not allow supermarket sales actually have a higher average per-capita cost of heavy drinking than other states with more liberal policies.
