Indiana alcohol legislation, teetotaling and "public safety."

Yes, Representative Bill Davis is serious: If small brewers were to sell closed containers of craft beer at farmers markets (as farmhouse wineries already can), public drunkenness and illicit fornication soon would chase the kiddos away from the heirloom tomato stall. I was there in the room when Davis remarked that if he had his way, Prohibition would yet again be the law(less) of the land.

Perhaps soon the legislature of Mississippi will begin its sessions with a new prayer: "Thank God for Indiana, or else we'd be the most ... "

You know, red state shit.

Legislature had little taste for alcohol bills, by Maureen Hayden (CNHI Statehouse Bureau)

Greensburg — When it comes to alcohol, the 2013 legislative session may be marked more by what it didn’t do to boost booze sales than what it did.

Legislators did decide to let a small group of well-established wineries and breweries to get into the business of distilling spirits, and it cleared the way for an auction of some cheap liquor licenses for lakefront development in a resort community on Lake Michigan. But they crafted both bills to have narrow impact.

In turning down another bill that would have given Indiana breweries the same right as Indiana wineries to sell their products at farmers’ markets, the legislative gatekeepers signaled their distaste for lifting Indiana’s historically strict limits on alcohol.

“If we did that, the next thing you’d know, we’d have farmers markets turning into liquor stores,” said House Public Policy Chairman Bill Davis, a Republican from Portland who’s played a key role in killing alcohol expansion bills.

Davis is a teetotaler who’s repeatedly killed a bill that would allow grocery and liquor stores to sell carry-out alcohol on Sundays. But he said decisions aren’t based on his personal views, but on what’s best for the public safety.