Rural Alaska: The Bootlegger’s Backyard
To most Americans, prohibition is just a fuzzy memory that's been passed down a generation; however, in some Alaskan towns, alcohol is actually forbidden or severely restricted.
Many rural Alaskan communities view alcohol as the primary motivator for crimes and social strife, according to a recent New York Times article. As a result, they've outlawed the drink.
In fact, alcohol is seen to some to be as illicit of a product as cocaine or heroin in those communities. And it's not just the authorities trying to make the case against booze—many rural residents have chosen to vote for the alcohol bans.
Alaskan state troopers told the newspaper that many sexual assaults, suicides, homicides, drownings, among other accidents, stem from alcohol use.
But, as we learned with the prohibition experiment of the 1920s, criminalizing booze doesn't necessarily mean that people will stop demanding and consuming it.
The Alaskan villages that have banned or regulated alcohol have seen an underground alcohol-based economy emerge, with bootleggers at the helm.
A Bootlegger's Life
Underground liquor sales can net big bucks. One of the most popular bootlegged bottles is a fifth of R&R whisky, which usually sells for $10 in Anchorage but goes for as much as $300 on the black market, according to the article.
In communities like Bethel, a town of 6,000 that serves as a base for 56 native villages in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, you can have alcohol in your possession (a certain amount is allowed for each person each month) but you can't sell it. There's not one bar or package store in town.
Bootleggers either have alcohol shipped in by airmail from Anchorage businesses or they smuggle booze in from nearby "wet" towns by strapping bottles to their legs or filling water bottles with vodka, according to the article.
Bootleggers also fly the booze in and take extra precautions so state troopers don't discover their stash.
For example, they know that troopers will listen to luggage to try to detect the glugging sound of liquid in a bottle, so they buy alcohol that comes in plastic containers, release the contained air without breaking the seal, and cover the cap with tape.
Once they have the alcohol safely inside the dry communities, the bootleggers use middlemen to hustle the booze to residents. The middlemen aren't paid much because they're usually concerned with one thing—having a bottle for themselves at the end of the day.
"It's identical to the drug trade," Jess Carson, an investigator for the Alaska State Troopers who patrols Bethel, told the newspaper.
Authorities certainly have their work cut out for them—rural Alaska covers a vast area and bootleggers are set on continuing to make their profits.
But it looks like authorities are up for the fight.
Just a few months ago, the article reports that state troopers chased two bootleggers more than 25 miles up a river—at speeds greater than 40 mph—to arrest them because of their five bottles of contraband vodka.
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