Blue Laws you've experienced first hand

[jp the roadgeek]

Connecticut only within the last few years legalized alcohol sales on Sunday. It is still illegal to sell alcohol after 8 PM any day.

Actually, 9 pm Monday-Saturday, and 10 am-5 pm on Sundays.  Plus, there's minimum pricing to prohibit competition among retailers, which is why people go to MA, NY, RI or NH for cheaper booze.

[SP Cook]

WV's liquor laws are all over the place. 

On the "liberal" side:

WV is a "shall issue" state.  One of the not very well understood aspects of liquor laws is that many states, including several you would not think of as socially conservative, NJ for example, limit the number of bars per jurisdiction.  WV doesn't do that.  If you fill out the forms and qualify, you can have a liquor license.   Mostly I think states that do not have "shall issue" are protecting existing businesses at the expense of new growth.

Liquor retailing is in private hands.

Drinking hours run to 3 AM.  Which, IMHO, is crazy. 

But, on the "conservative" side:

You cannot open a bar until 1 PM on Sunday.  The Greenbrier resort has been trying to get this changed for years, as it cannot serve stuff like Mimosas or Bloody Marys at its Sunday Brunch, and they cannot even sell beer at its PGA event until 1.  It even had a very narrow bill that exempted "gated hotels" which covered it and maybe 4 other places in the whole state and the Legislature still said no.

Liquor stores are closed on Sundays.

Until last year, liquor stores were closed on election days.  Which included those idiotic school bond elections, which they schedule on Saturdays in the hope nobody shows up to vote them down.  Finally changed because some counties were losing three or four Saturdays per year.

As to other "blue laws", WV still requires a county to vote in Sunday general retailing.  Although ever county worth mentioning has voted in the deal long ago.  The last was Mercer, which is not an insignificant county, which held out until the early 90s.  When the law was in place, "Necessary stores" (gas stations and grocery stores) could open, and the grocery stores had to tape off "non-grocery" items as not for sale.  A loophole in the law allows a store to avoid the Sunday deal if their religion had a different day of rest.  Which was obviously aimed at Jews and 7th Day Adventists and such.  The owners of the pre-Wal-Mart HECK's chain, back in the 60s (who were actually Syrian Orthodox Christians) swore they were some kind of religion they found in an encyclopedia that celebrated Tuesdays and closed then.  It went to court and they won and most counties with HECK's stores voted out the law the next election, because the other stores didn't want the unfair competition.

[bing101]

How about Pot Laws. I know in California there has been a push for some time to legalized recreational pot similar to Colorado. But California has had "Medical Pot" for 20 years.

How do states define the Difference between Medical Pot and Recreational pot. It seems to me that some states are waiting for Congress and the DEA to overturn a federal prohibition over their definitions of medicinal and recreational pot

[bing101]

Vaping using E-cigarettes and e-cigars have been a recent political issue in some cities in the United States. There has been warnings to include labels of Lung Cancer with that.