Dry counties

[traininthedistance]

There a not-so-delicious irony in Kentucky, the home of America's greatest spirit (bourbon of course), being the most dry state in the nation.  Most of the major distillers are even in dry counties, which is especially cruel.

The yellow is a little misleading, because esp. in the northeast and midwest you'll have counties that are mostly wet but one tiny dry town can flip it to yellow, which is really not the same thing as a "dry county" especially wrt your concerns (having to drive longer distances for booze leading to greater danger on the roads).

In general I'm okay with individual towns and Indian reservations going "dry" if they want but can't really support it at the county level, for the same reasons you give.

EDIT:  Also it's surprising to see no dry or even semi-dry counties in Mormon country (i.e. Utah, eastern Idaho).  I thought Utah had some strict alcohol rules that involved "clubs" and such?

[traininthedistance]

Quite a few states have laws that don't allow dry counties, Utah and Idaho being two of them. And if you're familiar with their liquor laws the reason is quite obvious, both are "control states" (meaning the state has a monopoly on the wholesaling of alcohol) and thus allowing any counties to go dry would deny the state a source of a income.

But Pennsylvania is a control state and there's a lot of yellow on the map in PA?

Here are the 17 states that effectively prohibit dry counties:

-Arizona
-Hawaii
-Illinois (though the aforementioned village, South Holland, is able to get around this by not issuing alcohol licenses)
-Indiana
-Iowa
-Maryland
-Missouri
-Montana
-Nebraska
-Nevada (with the exception of Panaca, which is dry via grandfathering)
-North Dakota
-Oklahoma (despite what the map shows, they've apparently enacted alcohol legislation that trumps municipal and county law).
-Oregon
-Pennsylvania
-South Carolina
-Utah
-Wyoming

Also, Idaho allows localities to prohibit on-premises sales, but not off-premises sales, which effectively prevents any "fully" dry localities from existing.

Is the map just wrong for PA then?