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New Jersey town ends 150-year alcohol ban by local vote

Collingswood residents approve liquor sales 60 to 40 after keeping dry status since 1873, restaurants that survived on BYOB now compete for licenses as neighboring towns kept the revenue

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Hands holding lager light foamy big beer glasses and clinking. Two friends sitting in bar and drinking alcohol drinks. Hands holding lager light foamy big beer glasses and clinking. Two friends sitting in bar and drinking alcohol drinks. foxnews.com
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Voters in Collingswood, New Jersey, have ended more than 150 years of local alcohol prohibition, approving liquor sales at licensed establishments with roughly 60 percent of the vote. The November 3 ballot measure passed 3,635 to 2,381 across all twelve precincts, according to election data from Camden County.

The restrictions date to 1873, when residents of what was then part of Haddon Township voted to ban alcohol sales — decades before national Prohibition. When Prohibition ended in 1933, Collingswood kept its own: in 1935, residents rejected liquor licenses by a margin of 3,859 to 774, according to a New Jersey Alcoholic Beverage Control bulletin from that year. The town held out through the demise of the temperance movement, the collapse of blue-law politics, and every shift in American drinking culture since.

What finally broke the streak was not a change in morals but a change in incentives. Collingswood built a reputation as a food destination in South Jersey — exactly the kind of restaurant row where diners expect a wine list. Reddit users debated the merits in the weeks before the vote, with some defending the BYOB culture on the grounds that restaurants "succeed or fail based on the quality of their food and not their ability to finance a license," while others answered that the ban was "dumb" and residents were "scared of change."

Deputy Mayor Amy Henderson Riley called the result historic: "After 91 years, Collingswood is no longer a dry town." The town kept its dry status for nine decades after the rest of the country repealed it, and surrendered it in a single Tuesday when 1,254 more voters decided the restaurants were losing too much business to the next municipality.