I missed it when it passed the legislature in April, but Colorado, as of … today … allows purchase of wine and beer on Sundays.
Yes, in many states that will sound very strange. Being raised in California, I was astonished when I got here and discovered that liquor stores were closed here on Sundays — and even grocery stores which carried 3.2 beer couldn’t sell it on Sundays (that changed since we moved here, but not with a lot of fanfare).
The last restraint to the change came largely not from prohibitionists or others of the sort, but from liquor store owners themselves, who actually kind of liked the day off (and siad it would add to their overhead without any increase in overall sales). They’re a powerful force in the state, and still keep the similar blue laws regarding liquor outlet ownership in the state (a given corporate entity can only have one liquor store, so no booze at grocery stores or Costco’s or Pier One’s, etc.). Will those laws fade in the near future, or parallel laws forbidding car sales on Sundays, too? Time will tell.
In the meantime, I don’t expect our home consumption of wine and beer will increase any under the new law. But our weekend errands will be less irksome to schedule when we do actually want to restock the fridge or wine cellar.