6 Feb 2012 - History of brown paper bags and booze

I was watching 'The Wire' tonight and there was an interesting story at the end of one of the episodes about why alcohol was packaged in brown paper, and why people conceal their booze in a brown paper bag when consuming it on the streets. It was told that when drinking on the street was made illegal, there was a large problem in many cities because people didn't have backyards and so would congregate on the streets in the evenings to have a drink in the cool evening breeze. Usually the drink being consumed was alcohol and even once it was made illegal people still flouted this law and many individuals were arrested for the offence. In order to reach a compromise (and avoid being put in jail) people started to drink their drinks on the streets outside their house concealed in a brown paper bag so that the police could turn a blind eye to the behaviour, as the paper bag removed the visible sign that the individual was drinking alcohol on the street. This has led to the tradition of people using brown paper bags to package alcohol because people would so often request it to assist in concealing their street drinking, that it became standard for shops to package it this way.

I was unable to back this story up with any hard evidence but much like the "Buckley's and none" saying (see post of 25 Jan 2012), of which there are two plausible reasons, this story is also quite plausible, and, from my quick internet search, believed by many to be the truth. So I have decided to include this as something new that I learned today, partly because I have discovered little else of interest today, but mainly because it is plausible and I like to think that this is the reason for the link between brown paper bags and booze! My further justification is that when I was travelling around Europe I was told many stories of how certain sayings came into existence and I have accepted these as truth for the same reason of their plausibility and because I can't really be bother determining if they are 100 percent accurate. Maybe the guy who determined that the duck's quack actually does echo, although only faintly (see post of 31 Jan 2012), is looking for a new project, and he can verify this and other sayings as accurate. However, I am happy to accept the story as fact without further evidence, I may be proved wrong at a later date, but such is life!