Utah’s “Private Clubs”

Utah is weird.

There, I said it. It’s just a plain weird place to live. I went to a picnic the other day, and the most distinguishing characteristics about it were the utter lack of any minorities, any alcohol, and the undercooked hamburgers busily worked over by a tall white guy named Brian. There were hordes of smiling white faces eating rare burgers with perfect teeth, while fat, pink babies crawled or toddled on the grass.

I grew up near Washington, D.C. Ethnic and habit diversity is something I’m used to. The monoculture of race and habit is unsettling.

Utah is also weird for its unique restriction on the distribution of “hard liquor”. Only three places are allowed to sell hard liquor: state-owned liquor stores that make an enormous profit, “private clubs” that in any other state would be called “bars”, and restaurants which derive more than 50% of their gross profits from the sale of foodstuffs other than alcohol. You aren’t allowed to have an open container of alcohol anywhere in public in Salt Lake City, Park City, and a number of other municipalities.

Like I said, weird.

A “private club” is an odd beast. Basically, to enter any bar in Utah, you have to fill out a lengthy form, show ID, and pay a club membership fee (minimum $5 or more). This makes bar-hopping a very expensive and time-consuming proposition for visitors. There are also specific rules about how many guests a private club member is allowed to bring with her into the bar. The oddest thing is these rules are codified into laws, with like actual jail time attached if you bring 8 friends with you into a private club rather than 7 or fewer.

Anyway, yesterday the Utah State Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission invited the public to comment on the issue. The quotes that sticks out to me, though, came from opponents of allowing “bars” in Utah. Their arguments were:

1. That not requiring name, address, phone number, and emergency contact information at bars would make it more difficult to prove drunk drivers had been drinking because there would be no written record of their entry to a bar,
2. That maintaining a list of every person who drinks at a bar in Utah is required for law-enforcement purposes,
3. That removing the “private club” restriction would send a mixed-message to youth; while we’re spending millions of dollars on the DARE program to convince children not to use alcohol or drugs, we’re also liberalizing our bar laws and thereby promoting the use of a “potentially dangerous controlled substance” (her words),
4. And finally, that we should not send the message that Utah’s moral standard on liquor can be abrogated for money from tourism and business.

My questions are: Do other states have a problem proving the guilt of a drunk driver using a Breathalyzer or traditional drunkenness tests? Are those who go to bars any more likely than the general public to commit a crime where their private-club record will help the case? Doesn’t DARE stand for “Drug Abuse Resistance Education”, and can’t responsible adults imbibe from time to time without it being “abuse”? Does the “moral standard” of those who oppose the private clubs modification really require that they make it as difficult as possible to get a drink in Utah?

I’m with Governor Huntsman on this one: get rid of the ridiculous “private club” requirement to serve liquor in Utah. It is a burden on visitors and those who wish to legally imbibe. It’s an arbitrary distinction that amounts to nothing more than a drinking tax imposed by those who want to bend the rest of the state to the will of the religious majority.