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Just the other day we discussed the stakes of relaxing open-container laws. It’s basically like:
Pros: Free-range drinking is fun; Europe does it; maybe it improves local economies?; civic engagement is good; broken-windows policing is bad; etc.
Cons: Regulation and enforcement are expensive; brace for bachelor/ette parties; Bourbon Street isn’t like, a nice place to live per se; done wrong, it reproduces developer-friendly profit machinery and further entrenches Big Alcohol’s extractive preference for ubiquity; etc.
It is this boozeletter’s carefully considered editorial opinion that the pros outweigh the cons. But frankly, I’m open to argument, and so is a quarter of the American drinking public writ large, if YouGov’s recent polling on the matter is any guide:
Open-container reform is a tricky thing to get right both operationally (as noted above), and politically, given how easily the nuanced nexus of outdoor drinking, policing, race, and class can be flattened and weaponized by bad-faith cultural revanchists for ulterior gain. Which is why I’m fascinated by California lawmakers’ current push to take San Francisco’s fledgling open-container compromise statewide.