On Friday and Saturday nights, the line to get a bottle of wine at the liquor store in this southern Utah town can stretch out the back door. The storage area of the town's lone liquor store is often stacked so high and so wide with cases of alcohol it's tough to walk or push a dolly through. But it doesn't take long for the piles to shrink and for customers to start complaining the store is out of stock. "It's been this way probably for a good year and a half," said Lee Scarlet, who manages the store. "It gets worse and worse and worse."There's a supply problem facing those who imbibe in this city of 126,000, where spectacular red rock scenery, sunny weather and affordable proximity to Las Vegas have contributed to a record population boom. St. George has a single state-run liquor outlet -- on the city's west side -- and its inventory is often depleted.
In Utah, liquor, wine and beer with an alcohol content over 3.2 percent by weight can only be purchased in state liquor stores. State law sets the number of liquor stores based on state, not local, populations. The law says the number of liquor stores can't exceed one per 48,000 people in the state.
"So all the liquor stores in the state could be in Salt Lake City," said Dennis Kellen, deputy director of operations for the Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.
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"Quebec's provincial liquor-store monopoly publicly acknowledged yesterday that despite earlier denials, two of its vice-presidents attempted to incite some European suppliers to take part in a price-fixing and kickback scheme.
It would have enabled the Societe des Alcools du Quebec to maintain high retail prices and avoid a drop in revenue that otherwise would have occured because of a 14-per-cent decrease in the value of the euro."
This *totally* would never happen in a million years.