Is America's Biggest Liquor Racket About to Go Out of Business? | Mother Jones

I am not sure what caught my eye with this article, the staggering numbers, "the four liquor stores in the town of about a dozen full-time residents sold 4.6 million cans of beer. Or roughly 383,333 cans per person. Or 1,009 cans of beer per resident, per day." Or the idea that merchants are profiting of the misery of the Native peoples.

Activists in Pine Ridge and their allies have tried for years to shut down Whiteclay. For the most part, those efforts have focused on the creation of a dry buffer zone that would extend across into Nebraska (the reservation ends at the state line). Congress had mandated the 50-mile buffer upon creation of the reservation in 1889, but in 1904, the liquor lobby successfully persuaded President Theodore Roosevelt to eliminate that buffer by executive order (which may have not been legal). Lawmakers could have extended the buffer on their own but chose not to, and despite repeated requests, no administration in Washington has been willing to consider reversing Roosevelt's order.

Tuesday's vote would lift the prohibition on beer sales in Pine Ridge entirely (hard liquor would still be prohibited), and put the tribe in charge of sales, the profits from which it could invest in things like alcoholism treatment centers. The theory is pretty straightforward, and consistent with the idea behind repealing prohibition everywhere else: The current legal structure has only served to enrich distributors in Whiteclay while doing nothing to curb addiction. With 8 out of 10 households on the reservation (which has a population of somewhere between 18,000 and 40,000) impacted by alcoholism, it's hard to imagine legalization making things much worse.

Is America's Biggest Liquor Racket About to Go Out of Business? | Mother Jones