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Escambia Ordinance Under Consideration To Allow Countywide Sunday Morning Alcohol Sales
February 13, 2021
A new Escambia County ordinance under consideration will allow stores to sell alcohol on Sunday mornings across the entire county.
Escambia County’s current hours for sale or purchase of alcoholic beverages were established in 1989, allowing sales between 6 a.m. and 2:30 a.m. each day except Sunday. The current ordinance bans retail alcohol sales on Sundays between 2:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. countywide, with an exception for Pensacola Beach and Perdido Key where it is legal to sell alcohol at retail stores on Sundays after 7 a.m.
If approved, the new ordinance will allow alcohol sales between 6 a.m. and 2:30 a.m. each day of the week (still prohibiting sales between 2:30 a.m. and 6 a.m., seven days a week).
The Escambia County Commission will hold a public hearing on the ordinance on Thursday, February 18 at 9:01 a.m.
If approved, the ordinance will become effective when it is filed with the Florida Department of State.
File photo.
Comments
27 Responses to “Escambia Ordinance Under Consideration To Allow Countywide Sunday Morning Alcohol Sales”
For what it is worth it is separation of church and state. No where does it say separation of church FROM the state. There is a distinct difference.
I am so glad there were no political laws of this nature when Jesus drank wine.
He would have to wait right?
Separation of church and state?
Daylight saving time….enter the politician….same story.
Blue laws are stupid. Prohibition is stupid. Restricting our right to do what we want and when we want legally is also stupid. Get it out of here.
The kind of people that don’t see the problem with this ban are actually making America not so great, which is highly ironic for obvious reasons. – Guy Gerricault.
So all of these people saying “just buy it Saturday”, what is the difference between someone buying it Saturday night or Sunday morning? How is it going to affect you if someone that works overnight had a bad shift and wants to grab a beer on the ride home? As far as the “its going to create more alcoholics”, if someone is going to be an alcoholic they are going to be an alcoholic. If anything by your logic having it inaccessible until Sunday afternoon is creating more of an issue as they are having to buy a larger quantity. Let these businesses make their money and open the sales
@nod – sheeple (according to Merriam-Webster) are people who are docile, compliant, or easily influenced.
I do not care if someone agrees with me or not. I think everyone should make their own decisions and be held accountable for their actions based on those decisions. “Big Brother” is too far up in our business already. It is sad that common sense is no longer “common”.
I say if you want the blue laws to stand because it’s the sabbath than I think we need to take all religions into consideration. The Muslim Holy day starts Friday noon so all liquor sales should stop at noon Friday. The Jewish Shabbat starts Friday at sunset so the sales ban continues into Saturday where the Seventh-day folks take it to sunset. I guess it’s fair to sell liquor from Saturday sunset to 2:30am. And don’t forget the LDS who think ALL shopping should be prohibited on Sundays so that takes us to Sunday Midnight.
So we close the liquor sales down from Friday noon until Sunday midnight with a possible window Saturday night.
Fair is fair after all. Right?
24×7 sales everywhere in the county is less hassle to regulate, remember, work around – and fairer to various licensed establishments. Further since those who want to drink, and drive, will – it reduces the miles they travel and thus directly reduces risk to others. Blue laws don’t work.
Remind me what going to church and the law have to do with eachother or did I read a different version of the constitution that removed the ‘separation of church and state’ clause? Plus, not everyone gives a rat’s patoot about going to church or your feelings regarding it. Don’t like it? Don’t buy any.
Wow, I cannot believe that so many people drink up all of their booze on Saturday. I don’t drink booze, but I make sure I have plenty of soda to make it through Sundays.
Why does alcohol have a time clock on it? I do not drink and I do not understand what the time has to do with anything concerning alcohol
Does the world stop rotating or what. within the forbidden hours?
Seriously
Sell it 24/7/365 county wide, done, one less thing to worry about.
I see one post about the sacred day it rest. Yes we should honor the sabbath, but let’s not be one of those Christians that points a finger at our neighbors. Are we really going to use this as our justification? If so we better be working to stop all work on that day. This would include shutting down all the restaurants so many go to after church. Oh and we can’t have mom frying chicken either that’s work too.
Best we stick to loving our neighbors and hopefully that will keep them from skipping church to go to a bar.
@Beedub what is a sheeple? Is that someone who disagrees with you. I believe they should sell beer 24-7.
Curious, Always, why some place that serves food can have a Wide-Open license for beer, wine, mixed drinks, etc while the little Mom & Pop place down the block has to not sell alcoholic beverages until 1:00 PM on Sunday.
Bergosh is onto something here about leveling the field for ALL businesses to operate under the same hours.
You people whining about “I can’t get no beer until 1:00″ are showing a Serious Lack of Ability to PLAN Ahead. Poor things, guess you never bought ahead for such dire emergencies.
I never knew we had a Sunday morning ban until I was trying to buy beer at 5am on a Sunday morning before going 20 miles offshore. Very inconvenient law, even for Christian people.
In the words of councilman Bergosh “this is backwards, discriminatory, and unfair…” We should “support uniform language for ALL Licensed Escambia County retailers to sell on an equal footing and at uniform times”. Preferably 7 days a week 6am to 2:30am.
The government needs to worry about important issues and not about when I can buy a beer. The “blue law” is a ridiculous regulation and is not relevant to the values in today’s society and it absolutely oversteps the church and state boundaries especially with the Covid-19 mandates.
Who cares if someone wants to buy alcohol Sunday morning? Mind your own business, if you do not want to buy alcohol at 10am on Sunday then don’t buy any. Sheeple need to break away from the herd and and make their own decisions.
I proposed the language change, as right now, as we speak, some stores can already legally sell alcohol on Sunday mornings but the same “type” of store, for no good reason, cannot sell on Sunday mornings. This is currently based upon such store’s geographic location in the county. Stores at the beaches can sell, but stores on the mainland cannot. So right now citizens that want to do so are driving out of their neighborhoods, across the county line to buy alcohol on Sunday mornings (Santa Rosa permits Sunday morning sales beginning at 7:00AM) or all the way to Perdido Key or Pensacola Beach to legally purchase alcohol on Sunday mornings. This is backwards, discriminatory, and unfair; my support for uniform language for ALL Licensed Escambia County retailers to sell on an equal footing and at uniform times will pass, more than likely with a rare 5-0 vote of the board.
This said—I am not advocating for folks to skip church on Sundays and go out and get drunk. I am not making a value judgment here. I cannot, nor can anyone, legislate morality.
But I can and I will fix language that puts some businesses on an unequal footing for reasons that are ridiculous, arcane, and obsolete—which the board’s approval of this ordinance Thursday morning will do.
Ordinance never made sense and was a confusing thing for our precious “Tourists” who are not from here.
Funny too because why not buy up a “Stash” of brew or booze on Saturday to help you make it thru until 1:00 PM on Sundays.?
Locals always knew that you could drive out to the beach (was a shorter trip then) and get a few suitcases of beer or a bottle of wine in a paper sack or a good brown whiskey early on Sunday.
Same with Perdido Key area and was part of the making of a still legendary watering hole out there “On the Line”.
More taxes and more income for the county that will hopefully be used to fix our roads.
Is Sunday not considered sacred or a day of rest anymore? I disagree with the proposed ordinance. I believe it will only encourage more drinking and may eventually produce more alcoholics. That’s a NO VOTE on the new ordinance from me.
The Escambia County Commission will hold a public hearing on the ordinance on Thursday, February 18 at 9:01 a.m. If unable to attend meeting on Feb 18 at 9:01am due to work, sick, elderly, etc., send in a letter or email to your County Commissioner as follows:
District1@myescambia.com – District2@myescambia.com – District3@myescambia.com – District4@myescambia.com – District5@myescambia.com and for the County Administrator – admin@myescambia.com 850-595-4947
Address is: 221 Palafox Place, Ste. 420 Pensacola, FL 32502
The drunks will love this
Good. This is the United States of America and there is a separation of church and state. A private business should be able to sell legal products whenever it wants. I’m shocked my fellow republicans would be anti-capitalistic but here we are!
Keep the ordinance the same. Its not going to hurt anyone to wait until 1pm to buy alcohol. If you need it that bad on Sunday morning then buy it on Saturday.
Boat needs to be in the water early Sunday morning for a day of fishing. Sure would be nice to ice down s 6 pack for later in the day.
Finally, all these years I’ve had to wait after Sunday service to get my snacks. Now I can go before!