Did you know??

This past semester I took my second policy analysis course through the public policy administration department. We have to take 2 courses outside of our department to specialize in something. I wanted tourism, but the course offering was pretty sparse and nothing was offered when I needed it for it to work. So, I am doing Policy Administration.

Anyway, we had to do a policy presentation this semester and one classmate did theirs on the wine laws in TN. Currently you can only purchase wine through a liquor store in the state. So no wine in grocery stores, convenient stores, Target, World Market, etc. It is a bit of a pain when you are grocery shopping and want to add wine to the list and you have to go to another store for it.

They recently passed a law to allow wine in grocery stores, but it does not go into effect until 2016. Also, it is up to each county, city, town, etc to vote and determine if they want to allow wine sales in grocery stores in their area. Remember, this is the bible belt here....where there is a church on every corner and nearly as many adult stores as well, which is ironic...however, I digress...back to wine.

Well, I learned something new during his presentation. Chain liquor stores are not allowed in the state of TN. You can ONLY own ONE liquor store and you must be local to own the store. So there are literally hundreds of mom and pop liquor stores in town because you can only have one. This totally blew my mind and I never really thought about it before.

We talked about liquor sales in other states as well and it is amazing how varied these laws can be. For instance, another girl in my program is from Wisconsin. You can buy hard liquor in the grocery store. This totally blows my mind, but I am just not used to that. The new law is great for TN, but it really doesn't matter to us since we will be gone before 2016.