If USA is a place renowned for personal freedom...

If USA is a place renowned for personal freedom, then why are they not allowed to enjoy a can or two of beer on a sunny day in a park?

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It's a thing that still sticked from prohibition era.

INTERESTINGLY ENOUGH, I was recently reading about prohibition and what surprised me is that its proponents is what we would today called "liberals" or "progressives"

Basically people that also were for feminism and all this stuff

That's classic liberalism though, they create more regulations, programs and bureaucracy by virtue of their beliefs

Indeed, and many in the temperance movement had also opposed slavery among other things. Anti-evil was/is anti-fun, and vice versa.

>beer
>can
pleb.

what? I thought the prohibition was over.

They still can't drink outdoors for some weird reason

The last dry state was Mississippi, which finally allowed alcohol in 1966. There are still several dry counties throughout the country, though.

Public drunkenness, apparently. Enforcement varies on jurisdiction. Here's a detailed look at it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_open-container_laws

They're no different us in this regard. You can drink outdoors on private property, where the owner of said property is ok with it (Your own garden, a m8s garden, a pub garden, etc etc), but you can't openly drink alcohol in public areas. I mean, you can rwally, you just have to be subtle about it and not cause any disturbance.

Or a bottle, I prefer cans, since their just more casual for... casual situations.

>There are still several dry counties throughout the country, though.
That's very interesting and odd. Are they a lot, widespread across the country or just a few, remnants of a disappeared era?

Pretty much this as well. So long as you're not being a nuisance and are reasonably discreet about it, you'll be fine. And any law that prohibits being drunk at a bar is only there so that the police have a legal means of intervening if you become a danger to yourself or others.

They're mostly in the South, but there are quite a few of them down there. There are several dry precincts in Chicago as well, but those are only for sale and don't affect consumption.

I don't know about your country, but here you can drink in parks (and forests, Picnic areas... Etc).

When I was living in UK everyone was drinking in the public, especially on friday & saturday nights. Cops didn't give a shit as long as you weren't causing a havoc.

In town centres on a Friday or Saturday night maybe, but that's different, since everybody is doing it. I'm talking about doing it out on the street on the middle of the day or in a shopping centre or something. You won't be arrested but you will have whatever booze you have confiscated and poured down a drain.

We can't too, desu. Giving people tickets for drinking in public is the polices favorit method of gaining founds.

>classic liberalism
Nope, classic liberalism is more laissez-faire, with small government and non-intervention.

This is social liberalism, i.e. what modern US liberalism is - intrusive social engineering.

Yeah, Americans don't have half the liberty they think they do. They have to pay property tax (effectively a land rent) so high that it costs people their property when the value goes up. In some municipalities, they're not allowed to have burn leaves in their back-garden or wash their car on the public road outside their property.

>boozing in a shopping center in the middle of the day

That's a bit extreme. But surely you won't get fined for reading a book in a park while having a beer in the middle of the day? I thought that's strictly forbidden in USA.

Are you taking the piss? There's nothing stopping me from stumbling down the street with half a bottle of wine

I honestly don't know the laws surrounding the issue. Bit no, as long as you're not being disruptive or acting drunk and disorderly, I can't imagine anything will happen.

If you really want to be sure about it, you could cover up the labeling (which is where the meme of the bum on the street drinking out of a bottle covered by a paper bag comes from), but unless you're in a gated community/suburb/severely-gentrified area, and so long as you don't cause trouble, you should be fine.

Until somebody reports you and the filth arrive to put an end your drunken mischief.

>Nope, classic liberalism is more laissez-faire, with small government and non-intervention.
that would be how the world would see it, but remember amerisharts are special people, so they have another name for it: libertarianism

This, although "Classical Liberalism" remains synonymous with it. Maybe the other burger meant "typical liberalism".

This thread got fucking gay.

Public drinking is technically illegal in Finland as well, but it's not enforced in any way. But so is for pubs to sell alcohol for drunken people, so, yeah.

Those are probably the only laws we don't abide at all.

I can drink anywhere I want.

Wow you first worlders are weird.

The selling alcohol to drunks is again only enforced as is needed, 2bh. In any case, does the government control the liquor stores in Finland? It does in 18 states.

It does, alcohol only up to 4,7% (going to be 5,5%) is allowed to sell from grocery stores. It's the same in Sweden and Norway as well.

Except in Sweden it's 3,5% and in Norway 4,5 or 4,7%

You are in certain cities.

Interesting. Immediately after Prohibition ended, a third of states decided to continue it for another couple of decades, another third decided to give liquor licenses to private enterprises, and the other third decided to control their liquor stores. The last dry state was in 1966, and the number of so-called "Alcohol Control States" have diminished over time, especially with stuff like beer and wine, so that there are now only 17 of them.

But there are still stores where you can get alcohol 24/7?

I can only speak for my state of South Carolina but yes. You can buy beer and wine 24/7/365 here. Liquor stores are limited to 9AM to 7PM from Monday to Saturday.

The 3.5% figure is only for beer (folköl), everything that isn't beer is limited to 2.25%.

Again, varies by state; most states limit the hours of purchase for non-liquor stores, and in Chicago at least last call is 4 a.m. for bars.

What would that be? Julmust?

Alcohol "free" cider and glögg primarily.

yes, some even have drive-throughs

Why make limit for those since their like 0,5-0,7 anyway, vad fan sverige

Most states I've been to have a 1:30 am "last call" in bars outside of metro areas.

What's surprising is the differences between states on where you can buy alcohol. Some states allow hard liquor sales in groceries, others allow only beer or wine in groceries, still others won't allow any alcohol sales except in liquor stores. And a few states, like Washington, have only state-owned liquor stores.

There was a bit of commotion in finnish newspapers when three finnish exchange students (from university) got arrested in some southern state for sharing a beer out in public on their way home.The Finnish ambassador managed to save their asses. Supposedly no other harm was done than the bottle had not been hidden in a brown bag, what's the logic behind?

Drinking laws in the US can vary wildly from city to parish to state. Here in New Orleans pretty much anything goes, the only exception is that we have an open container law. I know places in Mississippi and Alabama for example aren't nearly as lenient.

A lot of cops (and not just in the south) get triggered by college kids having a good time

There's just this idea that if alcohol was allowed to be sold in regular stores we'd be drinking ourselves to death before you could say 'skål'. So it's all heavily regulated in great detail.

Only in 2015 did the government say that they'd consider making it legal for local producers to sell smaller quantities, but afaik not law change has been made yet.

In Tennessee, wine may be purchased on Monday through Saturday between the hours of 8 AM and 11 PM in grocery stores and liquor stores. Same laws for hard liquor except hard liquor can't be sold in grocery stores. Liquor stores are closed on Sundays and wine cannot be purchased from grocery stores on Sundays.

Beer, cider, and malt liquor can be purchased from grocery stores on Monday through Saturday from 6 AM until midnight. On Sundays, the times are from noon until midnight.

Wine and hard liquor also can't be sold on certain public holidays like Labor Day and Independence Day.

I know all that, but why make mellanöl and the rest strictly 2,25%?

>put beer in metal water bottle
Problem solved mate

Also, some counties in Tennessee are dry. You may be familiar with Jack Daniel's. The county it is made in is technically dry, so no alcohol can be purchased there. The JD distillery has a special exemption for small purchases made at their gift shop, however, so yeah.

A pint in a park?

Interesting enough Mississippi is the only state that allows drinking and driving

A can in the country?

As in, open containers being drunk by the passengers? I'm pretty sure drunk driving is illegal, with per se laws as well, across the nation.

open container is legal in VA as long as it's out of reach of the driver

gotta be in the back seat basically, meant for limos and that sort of thing I think.

As long as you're under the legal limit you can drink whatever as a driver here, I mean why not...

>taking the piss
Why are brit modisms so weird?

Same here w/ a breathalyzer test. It's just that most if not all states ban drinking in a moving vehicle. I believe in California you can't even have alcohol in the back seat of a car.

You can drink on bar/restaurant patios, your own property outside, etc. they just don't want you stumbling down the street chugging on a 40.

If you're at a street festival or something nobody is going to bother you about buying a beer and walking around with it, just don't cause a problem or they might use it as a tack-on charge if you get arrested.

Because beer is very popular and when the law was first written folköl was allowed no be no more than 2.8%. Close enough that the government didn't want to piss people off. It later became 3.5% when taxation schemes were changed and the exception stuck around.

>A lot of cops (and not just in the south) get triggered by college kids having a good time
Underage detected, cops get triggered by the neighbors complaining about college kids having a good time

Same difference tb.h

I hate that the drinking age was changed from 18 to 21. If I can die for my country why can't I drink.

Simple, because niggers. Just how it is Simo

These laws are to reduce the incidence of drunk driving, especially given that 18 is an age where many people are just learning how to drive.

So let people make their decisions.

Because Angloshits/Celtshits cannot be trusted not to binge-drink at any given time

they limit other kinds of things too

prostitution's illegal and I think most states consider underage hentai same as full CP

>prostitution's illegal and I think most states consider underage hentai same as full CP
What?

only place it's legal is in nevada, right?

and there exists a large number of cases of people having been jailed for cp even though it's just hent

I have never heard of anyone jailed for cartoon porn but yes, prostitution is illegal

Now I know where Russian MPs get their ideas about our laws from.

Been stopped by the cops while drinking in public quite a few times, mostly when I was underage.

When they saw that me and the people I was with weren't doing any harm they left without issue. Most time not even mentioning my age when checking my ID. Then again I live in a big city where they have bigger issues, I hear the suburbs are a lot stricter.

well ok apparently not treated as cp but just "obscene"

escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98325-Hentai-Collector-Sentenced-to-Jail-Over-Obscene-Material

It all comes from American Calvinism. Abolition, suffrage, temperance - those were all Calvinist/Universalist slogans.

I don't support those laws myself, but to play the Devil's Advocate, I could see how driving is mandatory in the US while drinking isn't.

>most states consider underage hentai same as full CP
No, in fact I believe we're one of the few countries to NOT do that, much like the whole hate speech thing.

Prostitution is however illegal everywhere except rural Nevada, likely a remnant of the Progressive Era.

>Prostitution is however illegal
Why? Isn't it a restriction to a free trade?

>No, in fact I believe we're one of the few countries to NOT do that, much like the whole hate speech thing.
then why do you jail people for it

>Under Miller v. California, obscene speech is likewise excluded from First Amendment protection.

>In Richmond, Virginia, in December 2005, Dwight Whorley was convicted under 18 U.S.C. 1466A for using a Virginia Employment Commission computer to receive "obscene Japanese anime cartoons that graphically depicted prepubescent female children being forced to engage in genital-genital and oral-genital intercourse with adult males."
>On December 18, 2008, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction.

>In October 2008, a 38-year-old Iowa comic collector named Christopher Handley was prosecuted for possession of explicit lolicon manga.
>Handley was convicted in May 2009 as the result of entering a guilty plea bargain at the recommendation of his lawyer, under the belief that the jury chosen to judge him would not acquit him of the obscenity charges if they were shown the images of question.

>In October 2010, 33-year-old Idaho man Steven Kutzner entered into a plea agreement concerning images of child characters from the American animated television show The Simpsons engaged in sexual acts.

My city only recently decriminalized it in March, although it was loosely enforced in recent years

>He doesn't know about Rad Thad

Probably because of "muh degradation of women".

Hmm, obscenity is indeed one of the few exceptions to the 1st Amendment, but apparently we don't do it because it """engenders perverse urges""" like most other countries do.

I believe MadThad was v& for actual CP.