The Liquor Question

There are three kinds of towns in Alaska: wet, damp and dry.  Wet means anyone over the age of 21 can buy alcohol in stores, bars, restaurants.  Damp means people over the age of 21 can possess but not buy alcohol anywhere within the town.  Dry means possession by anyone of any kind of alcohol is illegal.  The reasons for this are many and varied and simple: alcoholism is a huge problem in Alaska.  It is genetic, generational and historic.

Togiak is a dry village so no relaxing beer at the end of the day, no chilled white wine spritzer at potlucks, no teacher bar to do shots after a difficult day to vent with other teachers about how we hate our jobs, our students, our lives. 

Drugs are also a huge problem in Togiak, due to many of the same factors.  I do not know a single kid here who has not been affected negatively by drugs, partly due to the fact that everyone is someone's cousin here.  But between the lack of economic opportunity, poor education and plain old boredom, addiction is part of life.

Marijuana is now legal in Alaska to those over 21 for recreational use, but smokers here are not usually that old.  Where they get it, I have no idea but at this time, it is ubiquitous and unregulated.  I don't know if there is an official prohibition on the books yet, but I imagine there will be soon enough.

I had a beer the day before I left Oregon.  The only alcohol I have had since then was in the mouth wash I keep in my desk for days I have salmon for lunch.  It burned like the first time I ever tried Irish whiskey.   Minty fire.  I suddenly realized that I could probably be fired for having this travel size bottle in, not just my desk at school, but in my possession at all.  They literally put people in the village jail when caught with alcohol.

I remembered seeing at the store a bottle of vanilla extract, behind the register next to a bottle of hand sanitizer.  I didn't think about it at the time but I wonder now if there is some kind of formal registration one has to sign when purchasing these items.  Like with Sudafed in Oregon.  Here, I can't even buy Nyquil from Amazon; it brings up a prohibited message.

My students always always always ask before using the hand sanitizer bottle that was in my classroom before I got there.  These are the kids who help themselves to everything in the room: pencils, tape, liquid paper all had to be locked in my desk drawers after the first week when we went through so many supplies I feared we would run out by October.   But they respect the alcohol content in hand sanitizer.  Now my job is to teach them that alcohol isn't the problem, alcoholism is.
And that there is so much more to it than that.