Sunday Liquor Sale Curbs Are Falling By The Wayside

By Anna Deem in News on Nov 27, 2010 6:45PM

Last month, Downers Grove joined a nationwide trend when they passed a measure allowing Sunday liquor sales to begin at 9 a.m. instead of noon--a change that local restaurants and hotels wanted to cash in on Bears games. Since 2002, 14 other states have dropped their liquor-related Blue Laws and allowed Sunday sales of alcohol, bringing the total number of states to 36, says Lisa Hawkins of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. "Blue Laws simply don't make sense in today's economy. They inconvenience consumers and deprive states of much-needed tax revenue," she said to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Earlier this year, Naperville began allowing liquor sales to start at 8 a.m., influenced by a letter from Jewel-Osco that detailed hourly sales on Sundays, which showed that Naperville residents spent more than $700,000 at Jewel-Osco stores in nearby communities on Sunday mornings. "When we went and researched through Jewel, we found that many of our residents were going outside the city to make purchases," said Mayor and Liquor Commissioner A. George Pradel to the Sun-Times. "There are a lot of tax dollars going to other communities."