Jefferson City Is Right to Block Kansas City’s Mini Bottle Ban
Kansas City has real problems. Banning mini bottles is not a serious response to any of them.
Mayor Lucas will reach for any excuse to avoid arresting and prosecuting criminals.
Jefferson City is right to step in. Speaker Patterson is moving to block the ordinance.
Mayor Lucas pitched the ordinance as a response to violence, loitering, litter, and public drunkenness in certain neighborhoods. The proposal would ban the sale of miniature liquor bottles and other small-format alcohol products in designated areas.
Store owners feel like they’re being blamed for the failures of city government.
The proposal raises an obvious question: if single-serve alcohol is the problem, why is it only a problem in certain parts of the city?
If crime is the problem, we should be dealing with crime.
This is not some narrow public safety fix. It’s a sweeping restriction on ordinary legal sales.
And let’s be honest. Kansas City is not inventing anything new here. Washington, D.C. has long had restrictions on single-sales alcohol in some areas.
Only Mayor Lucas could look to Washington, DC as a model of public safety.
Even the legal footing of the ordinance looks shaky. It’s not clear that Kansas City can lawfully impose this kind of targeted alcohol ban in some neighborhoods but not others. That should have been a red flag from the start.
And all of this is happening while City Hall looks increasingly unserious.
The FBI is investigating the Mayor Pro Tem and her husband.
City Hall investigated the Kansas City Star for “bias.”
Only Mayor Lucas could look at the Kansas City Star and think it was biased against his Liberal administration.
Kansas City needs law and order, not another ordinance.
Andy Bakker
Executive Director
Liberty Alliance USA