LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Four Nebraska beer stores criticized for selling millions of cans each year next to an American Indian reservation where alcohol is banned will remain closed after the state Supreme Court on Friday rejected their appeal.
The court thwarted the last-ditch effort to resume beer sales in Whiteclay, Nebraska, a tiny village on the border of South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The ruling upholds an April decision by state regulators not to renew the stores’ licenses amid criticism that the area lacks adequate law enforcement.
Adequate Law enforcement? I'm calling Bull shit on this. Where's the county Sheriff? If they really have a big problem with crime it's their job to deal with it in a small town that can't afford a police department. Inadequate law enforcement in no excuse to shut down people's businesses.
The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is plagued by a litany of alcohol-related problems, including high rates of fetal alcohol syndrome, and activists complain that Whiteclay fuels those issues. The four stores — in a village with just nine residents — had sold the equivalent of about 3.5 million cans of beer annually.
Every reservation has much higher rates of alcoholism and drug abuse than the rest of the country which most of them allow the sale of alcohol. The only other areas in the country that are comparable to the problems on the reservations would be poor minority areas of major cities AKA ghettos. so I'd argue alcohol is not the problem rather a symptom of the problems on reservations and banning it only makes people in banned areas consume it more.
So is this court ruling really going to stop Natives from driving to Nebraska to buy alcohol?
I'd say not a chance in hell this is going to stop them. You see Whiteclay is two miles from the City of White Pine on the reservation. it sits right on the border of Nebraska and South Dakota so obviously it's the prefect spot to sell alcohol. Err, wait... the perfect spot to sell alcohol would be in White Pine itself so the city can get some tax revenue from the sales but that's not an option for the people so Whiteclay is the next best place.
Now this law might stop people from walking or riding bike across the border to buy alcohol but is really going to stop people with a vehicle. Just look at the map below, the next nearest town in Nebraska is Rushville which is only 18 or 20 miles from the South Dakota border. That's just a slight inconvenience for people living on the rez because they are use to driving one or two hours to a large city to buy stuff. So I don't think this ruling will have any effect on people from the rez buying alcohol in Nebraska because they will just drive the extra 20 miles to Rushville and buy alcohol there.
This is another case of government causing the problem while at the same time they are offering solutions to the problem. Just repeal the alcohol ban and everyone will be much more happier.
Source: http://wtop.com/consumer-news/2017/09/nebraska-court-ends-beer-sales-near-south-dakota-reservation/