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Can't put genie back in the bottle "You can't put the genie back in the bottle," someone observed of the lawsuit trying to overturn alcohol sales in tiny Cedar Bluff up in Cherokee County in north Alabama. The suit challenges sales in Cedar Bluff only but dry advocates and others say if it succeeds in drying up Cedar Bluff, Jackson, Thomasville and Monroeville will be the next targets. At issue is a constitutional question: Do municipalities have the right to regulate alcohol? Wet proponents say municipalities have the right to decide the issue through a provision in the 1901 State Constitution. Opponents say the provision cited does not give that right to all municipalities. They say a state law only authorizes a wet-dry vote in municipalities in dry counties with populations of 7,000 or more. Cedar Bluff, Thomasville and Jackson all have populations less than 7,000 but approved referendums on the wet-dry question through legal local option laws. Now, Alabama Attorney General Troy King wants to intervene in the argument, presumably on the side of the drys. The legal argument is confusing. We do know that all of the municipalities in question followed procedures required by local laws passed by the Alabama Legislature to set up referendums on the issue. The referendums were hard fought battles. Jacksonians surely remember the pitched furor of the local fight. Each municipality voted overwhelmingly to allow alcohol sales and many businesses are selling beer, whiskey and wine today because they were told they have the legal right to do so. We won't say there haven't been any problems with alcohol sales but we do think they are minor. Our contention is that municipalities should have the right to govern themselves. The majority of citizens in each of the municipalities in question voted for legalized alcohol and businesses and others have acted in good faith abiding by the law in selling alcohol. Some had to spend money to buy fixtures and other equipment and for the state to now overturn what voters have approved would be a travesty. It would be like trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
Jim Cox
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