Is Indiana Ready for Cold Beer at Convenience Stores? Is America Ready to End Prohibition?

Note: As several commenters have pointed out, there are some errors in the laws listed below. Cold beer is available at wholesalers in Pennsylvania. In New Hampshire, distilled spirits are sold exclusively through state stores, but beer and wine is sold at private stores, including supermarkets and convenience stores. We regret the inaccuracies.

Did you know that Indiana – my birthplace and ancestral homeland – didn't only give rise to Johnny Cougar and "a little ditty about Jack and Diane?"

It's also a mecca for warm beer!

In the Hoosier State, it's against the law for convenience stores to sell cold beer. No wonder my father was always so grumpy at family picnics. Room temperature suds is a surefire way to make any gathering of kin more likely to end in gunplay.

Of course it's not just Indiana that has incredibly stupid and punishing booze laws.

As Colorado, Washington state, and other places around the Land of the Free start legalizing pot, it's the perfect time to repeal the vestiges of alcohol prohibition that went into effect even before Woodrow Wilson had his stroke.

In Pennsylvania, with some exceptions, you can only buy beer – body temperature, naturally – at wholesalers and you have to buy it by the case. 

In New Hampshire – the live Free or Die state -- you'll have to die before you can freely buy beer booze – you can only buy alkyhol at state-run stores. Even the Soviet Union was more liberal than that.

Bloody Kansas kept alcohol prohibition in place until 1948 and to this day you can only 3.2 percent beer at convenience stores. Oh thank heavens for 7-11? Not in Topeka!

All throughout our purple mountains majesty, there are more laws regulating the buying of booze than of sex toys.

But the Hoosier State may bet a shot of sanity, with a beer chaser. The Indiana Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association is suing to finally sell cold beer. Beer drinkers want choice and change. But most of all they just want a cold brew in hand to drown Johnny Cougar's "Jack and Diane."

Written by Kennedy and Nick Gillespie. Produced by Joshua Swain.

About 2 minutes.

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