University of Virginia Library

FOR VIRGINIA MOONSHINE

Students arriving in town with pocketbooks filled by summer jobs were ready
two months ago to stand by the law and patronize the ABC system of liquor
dispensing. Tempting offers from mountain moonshiners and depleted purses are
responsible for a new attitude.

The Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Board does not offer for sale the corn
and rye whiskies manufactured in the Virginia mountains that have been the most
popular beverages in Virginia since colonial days. Persons in the habit of buying it
for generations will not change their minds unless they have to, especially when
the price is half the price of Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Illinois, and Maryland
brands. Law-observance is an ideal that every citizen loves. Yet when the laws
cannot command the respect of citizens, the citizens ignore the ideal. The
enforcement of the Virginia ABC law will not succeed as long as the enforcing
board ignores a home product and a home industry. The home product is more
popular and less expensive than the foreign product offered by sale by the board.
The home industry, though illegal, will never be suppressed. If made legal it would
be a source of honest employment for citizens of the state and a source of
revenue for the government. True it is that small distilleries have been licensed in
Virginia, but none so far is able to produce what Virginians demand, and the
combined product of all Virginia manufacturers cannot compare with the
individual production of the big out-of-state plants which find many of their sales
in Virginia.

Because we write on a subject that College Topics has not broached in the past
does not indicate that there is more interest in whiskey here now than formerly,
nor does it mean that we are interested in a subject that other colleges ignore. We
are interested in the best methods of enforcing a law and in the best ways of
regulating an evil that has been with all races since earliest times. The per capita
consumption of whiskey among Virginia students is higher than among students
at other colleges merely because those other schools try and artificially suppress a
natural desire of all men. We would like to see all whiskey consumed here licensed
by the state government, so that if whiskey is to be consumed it may be
consumed with a minimum risk to the drinker's health.