Nurse Ratched at the Polls

Former Catoite Amy Phillips has a neat rundown of “Nanny‐​State” ballot initiatives in the several states. The war on smoking remains popular, with smoking bans passing in Arizona, Nevada, and Ohio–but, happily, there’s some support for “cut and run” in the war on marijuana, with liberalization measures apparently passing in Arkansas, several California cities, Massachusetts, and one Montana county–though failing in Colorado, Nevada, and South Dakota.


In Massachusetts, “56 percent of voters rejected a measure to allow grocery stores to sell wine,” due to the efforts of a “Bootlegger/​Baptist” coalition in which liquor store owners funded a campaign designed to stoke fears of increased teen drinking. But in Oklahoma, 53 percent of voters, recognizing that there’s no better day of the year for heavy drinking, voted “to repeal a ban on the sale of alcohol on Election Day.”