Seattle Yuppies hooked on Fortified Whine

The Washington State Liquor Control Board is contemplating a ban on cheap beer and fortified wine in Seattle's city centre. This page considers this move as little more than a sop to the influx of upscale and uppity condo buyers who move downtown but demand that everything should feel like the suburbs. They want 'someone' to do 'something' about the number of homeless and working poor putting back a little Colt 45 on the corner, but it better not be the government - at least not until they're done dishing out tax breaks and building a few more roads out of downtown to make it easier to avoid the poor people.

Here's what going to happen if the WSLCB implements their 'Alcohol Impact Area' policy: Instead of buying the $1.50 malt liquor, panhandlers will just get more aggressive because they now have to raise a dollar or two more to get a can of 'premium' beer (if one can call Budweiser 'premium'). The yuppies will get more skittish, and start screaming about a bigger alcohol sales ban. After that you start to get street people drinking whatever household cleaning products they can get their hands on, much like this page saw in Edmonton's Boyle Street area when he lived there twenty years ago.

Here comes the scary part: once somebody can't afford a drink, and realizes the Lysol he's been drinking tastes awful and has been killing his friends, he's fresh meat for the Devil's Amway. Drug dealers are more than happy to cut you a break on the price of bad heroin if you're willing to do some of the pushing for them. Vancouver's Downtown Eastside has no liquor stores save for a couple of pub outlets, which may very well explay why it's home to the largest open drug market in North America. Once you've seen a body or two being pulled out of an alley and into the ambulance for a toe tag, that guy sipping Eight Ball on the other side of the street isn't so repulsive after all.