In Arkansas, Booze Sellers and Churches Unite
Bottles of Beam Inc.'s Jim Beam bourbon whiskey, second left and center, and Maker's Mark bourbon, right, are displayed for sale at a liquor store in Tokyo, Japan, on Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2014.
Photograph by Yuriko Nakao/BloombergArkansas liquor stores have allied with religious leaders to fight statewide legalization of alcohol sales. The stores in wet counties don’t want to lose customers. The churches don’t want to lose souls.
A ballot issue next week asks voters whether to amend their constitution to permit sales of intoxicating liquors in all 75 counties, up from about half. Passage would further erode the shrinking swath of America, mostly in the South, clinging to vestiges of Prohibition even as cultural attitudes and waning religious influence have killed it off elsewhere.