Beer ban will backfire

The article “Cheap beer, wine sales banned downtown starting May 15” states the goal of this ban will uplift the downtown area by reducing public intoxication to those that chose to purchase inexpensive, fortified beverages in the broader downtown area.

This solution will not solve any problems, but merely change the location of them. Most people with an alcohol addiction will either buy the slightly higher priced import choices or even worse, may get in a vehicle and drive to get the cheaper beverage elsewhere, especially those in Browne’s Addition. This inadvertently suggests that poor and homeless people don’t have as much of a right to drink as the people who have a little more money to spend on their alcoholic beverages, because it does not ban them from bars nor does it ban slightly higher priced beverages with the same alcohol content.

If we make these drinks illegal then we make the people who purchase them victims of criminal activity. Instead, Spokane officials should make more of an effort to implement programs for low-income and homeless people to get help for their alcohol addictions rather than making them spend more money on alcohol to forget their suffering.

Tara Sistrunk

Spokane