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Fox News will have to find somewhere else to clutch their pearls for next year’s spring break: Panama City Beach City Council unanimously voted 5-0 on Tuesday to ban alcohol from the city’s beaches for the month of March in 2016. While the vote was unanimous, support was split. The Citizens United for Panama City Beach represented the hospitality workers, arguing that the ban will hurt tourism during a month that typically provides the city with an economic boost.
If college kids aren’t allowed to be drunk idiots on their beaches, they’ll just go somewhere else in Florida where they can be drunk idiots. AL.com reported on what went down during the meeting:
Supporting the ban, Hector Solis argued that the economic impact of spring break is overblown and that spring breakers spend relatively little per person, compared to families, snowbirds or other visitors. He said the impact to the city was further diminished by the added expenses of additional policing and other city services.
“March is not what it’s made out to be,” Solis said. “We’re told that (spring break) means all this economic stimulus to the area, and it’s going to the few, it’s not going to the many.”
“Where do you stand in the universe?” [local attorney Wes] Pittman asked. “Do you want to be remembered by open sex on the beach? Still in our minds are shootings, rapes, stabbings, rampant drunkenness and chaos.”
In addition to the beach alcohol ban, the city council also approved two other ordinances that have yet to be voted on that recommend prohibiting alcohol sales after 2 a.m. and banning drinking alcohol in commercial parking lots. A spring break where I can’t pour a fifth of Bacardi into a lemon-lime Slurpee, then sit in the 7-Eleven parking lot to drink it is no spring break I would ever want to imagine.
(Via BroBible)