A local option is the ability of local political jurisdictions, typically counties or municipalities, to allow decisions on certain controversial issues based on popular vote within their borders. In practice, it usually relates to the issue of alcoholic beverage sales. As described by an encyclopedia in 1907, local option is the "license granted to the inhabitants of a district to extinguish or reduce the sale of intoxicants in their midst." while a 1911 Encyclopædia describes it as "specifically used in politics of the power given to the electorate of a particular district to choose whether licences for the sale of intoxicating liquor should be granted or not. This form of "local option" has been also and more rightly termed "local veto."
Local option regarding alcohol was first used in the temperance movement as a means to bring about prohibition gradually. The Anti-Saloon League initially decided to use local option as the mechanism to bring about nation-wide prohibition. Its intent was to work across the country at the local level. In many instances, however, this was not the agenda. For instance, several wards in Ontario, Canada, passed local option but were vehemently against province-wide prohibition, preferring to isolate alcohol sales rather than ban them altogether. This is particularly evident in Toronto's Junction neighbourhood, part of which remained notoriously dry as late as 2000, the last area of Ontario to repeal prohibition.
Following the repeal of national Prohibition in the United States in 1933, some states chose to maintain prohibition within their own borders and some chose to permit local option on the controversial issue. In the remainder of states, there was no prohibition. Overlying this patchwork of prohibition, many states (known as alcoholic beverage control states) decided to establish their own monopolies over the wholesaling and/or retailing of alcoholic beverages. Montgomery County, Maryland, for example, has used local option to establish its alcohol control monopoly within its borders.
Famous quotes containing the words local and/or option:
“Wags try to invent new stories to tell about the legislature, and end by telling the old one about the senator who explained his unaccustomed possession of a large roll of bills by saying that someone pushed it over the transom while he slept. The expression “It came over the transom,” to explain any unusual good fortune, is part of local folklore.”
—For the State of Montana, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)