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Comment by tibbydudeza | Hacker News Reader

We are on a 4 week country wide Covid-19 lockdown stay @ home and as part of the regulations they banned all alcohol sales.

Some entrepreneurial person now does drone deliveries of booze within a 5km radius of his home.

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>as part of the regulations they banned all alcohol sales

For my curiosity, would you mind sharing where this is? It contrasts with my experience in the US, where I know a few states made it easier to sell alcohol.

Dude's name ends with ZA which is the TLD for South Africa

Holy crap, this is insane: https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/lockdown-alcohol-ban-st... .

I can't imagine trying to get through this quarantine without at least some booze, and I rarely drink. How are they handling all the bonafide alcoholics that would go into DTs with this?

And cigarettes. Smokers must be going insane.

Also Bahamas has no liquor sales, and crazy tight lockdowns every weekend where you can't leave your house for groceries even.

Having lived in Africa for 2 years (not SA though), I guarantee that the reason for the ban is for the government to profit off of bribes. Whenever something doesn't make any sense in Africa, the answer is always the same: bribes.

Pennsylvania closed their state run liquor stores.

Virginia/West Virginia/Ohio's are still open, I'm pretty sure across the whole U.S they're still open.

The northern counties of West Virginia have also issued a prohibition order for all non-residents, so that only West Virginians can purchase alcohol because apparently there have been hundreds of cases of Pennsylvanians crossing the border just to buy alcohol.

Some find this order reasonable, but most in WV find this irresponsible of both WV and PA since alcoholics cutting cold turkey can be hospitalized for their withdrawal symptoms.

Wow that's crazy. In Seattle liquor stores, breweries (take-away only), beer bottle shops, and marijuana stores are all included under the "essential" exemption. I can't imagine the upheaval we'd have if the government had shut them.

I have friends in the philippines (Manilla specifically) who told me this

That's gotta be a pretty powerful drone- booze isn't light!

involves a lot of trust, too. I imagine the customer has to detach the shipment by hand. a drone capable of delivering a fifth of liquor must be worth at least $1-2k. considering the whole operation is likely illegal for several reasons, I doubt the owner would have much recourse if someone just stole it.

But then no more fly-in alcohol. The booze-drone is like a 21st century golden-egg goose.

> I doubt the owner would have much recourse if someone just stole it.

well, just let everybody know who broken the deliveries and thus made the whole neighborhood gone dry :)

He probably has a camera on it. And let me tell you, you don't want to fuck with the wrong South African. They will kill you.

Serving up the pre-packaged/airplane shots would be fitting.

Good idea but I can’t imagine this being legal.

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