As the poll results continue to trickle in, I am getting more and more excited. As an adult with rights to adult decisions and choices, it will be a great to go to my neighborhood grocery store for my dinner's wine selection instead of 30 minutes away. There are some that are upset with this, but is it their right to take away my right to choose for myself?

If the early voting results are showing what is coming to us in Tyler, than tomorrow will be a brand new day with lots of changes.

Since the day I turned 21, I realized the excitement of finally feeling like an adult and celebrating that with my first bar bought beer. I did not understand at the time why this was different than going to the grocery store for a six pack. Why was going to a bar allowed and drinking at home without a long drive to get there, not? Even though I felt like an adult at 21, it was more like I was a child with a city full of parents telling me what I could and could not do. Why were strangers controlling my life even after my real parents let me free to make my own decisions?

My upbringing never made beer nor wine seem to be the horrible thing that most voting against propositions one and two see it as. My parents were never big drinkers. In fact, I only remember seeing my father once with a bottle of wine. I was a young girl of about nine years old and I was curious about what this special drink was all about. My father let me have a little try of the wine, and at that age I thought it was the most disgusting thing in the world. Growing up in a home that educated me on alcohol and showed me how not to abuse it, led me to feel a maturity and comfort around the beverages. Maybe I am a rare case, but I do not believe that an epidemic of alcoholism will crash over Tyler completely washing out all of it's goodness if propositions one and two pass.

You cannot save people from themselves. If people want to drink a beer or have a glass of wine, they will. Even if that means they have to drive out of town to get it. This trip causes a chance for alcohol related auto accidents. Why? Because people are drinking the stuff on their way back into town. Not to mention, everyone drinking at the bars in town and then driving home. Especially with the early closing times, people are sucking down as much alcohol as they can before the clock runs out. After these folks have had their last minute shots, they have to get home some way. Wouldn't you think that if they could have a drink with dinner at a restaurant and then save themselves some money by finishing the drinks at home, wouldn't that be safer?

I understand that everyone agrees that this city should remain safe, but we don't all agree about the local sale of beer and wine. I ask you only to let me choose for myself. As we sit as the wettest dry county in the state, would much really change? For me and the others that look forward to this, yes. For those that do not drink alcohol, like my parents, nothing would change.

Let us all be adults making their own decisions and free us from the oppression of another's opinion.

 

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