Georgia's Crazy Laws, Rules & Regulations

We live in a country where we have a lot of rights and freedoms that you simply wouldn't find in many other nations across the globe but there are still a couple of laws that I look at as a little archaic and downright stupid to be perfectly honest, and live in Georgia, as I do, there are two in particular that are of particular distaste to me.

Number one on my hit list is that you cannot go to a liquor store and buy booze on a Sunday. I don't really know the reasoning behind this law but I assume as it's a Sunday which is considered a holy day and Georgia is smack bang in the middle of the Bible belt that there may be some sort of connection there but I could be wrong. Where it all gets a little fuzzy for me on this one is that the bars are still open so you can head on down to your local pub and get completely trashed but you can't buy any to take home with you. The logic here seems a little skewed to me. I knew of a fellow whose job it was to pick up the beer for a Super Bowl party and of course he forgot to do it on Saturday night and was forced to call around all his friends and go door to door picking up any stray beers that they may have had available. I could put up with this law if they just had a 1 day reprieve each year so that every red-blooded American male who watches the Super Bowl could go out and buy a six pack an hour before the game started. What makes the matter worse here is that if you do forget the beer you are taunted by all the new Budweiser, Coors Light, Corona, and every other beer on the market, TV ads that run throughout the big game....cruel and unusual punishment indeed?

Next on my hit list is sports gambling. It is illegal here in Georgia yet every day of the week here there is at least one State lottery where you can buy as many tickets as you like in hopes of winning millions. Is it just me or does this stink of a little hypocrisy? How is it that I can't bet on the ponies or a ball game but I can lay down thousands of dollars in hope that my little numbered ping pong balls will come out in some kind of order that will at least win me a free play? It's all gambling whichever way you slice it.

On top of all that, the government is now cracking down on internet gambling, the only outlet for those of us who like a little flutter but live in states where we can't. Most of the online sites are in some remote off-shore location and it's that which seems to be drawing the ire of the feds. It would make sense to me if it was a nationwide ban but I can drive 3 hours, cross the border into a neighboring state and gamble to my hearts content. If someone has a real gambling problem then they would certainly be prepared to make that trip to get their fix or find a street bookie who will take their bet for them. If the government is happy enough to take our hard earned dollars in lottery money then it doesn't add up that they wouldn't legalize sports gambling and tax the sports books who could then operate in the US and do so legally creating jobs and a huge influx of tax dollars. This is a practice that is being followed in a number of civilized nations around the worlds, Great Britain being the most prominent, and none of those countries have seen a rise in problem gambling.

Look, here's the deal; people who can't buy booze on a Sunday will either stock up on Saturday or hit a local bar and drink there so the law as it stands now is hardly a deterrent to the evils of alcohol and people that want to make a bet are still going to find an outlet to do so. I used to live in Canada and the government there came out with a sports betting type lottery ticket that you could play every day. There was a bit of an outcry from a small morally appalled section of the country but the last time I checked Canada hasn't turned into a nation of gambling addicted degenerates and I think it's safe to say that we'd be okay here too if we adopted a similar type of program.