I have never understood why our elected officials have to be involved in bottle sizes. I can remember when 8oz. stubbies had to be approved by state government. How ridiculous is that?
I'll take a stab at why it might not be so ridiculous. 40s of malt liquor.
Okay, 1 large bottle, 8 stubbies, 4 regular size bottles, 3 pints. What difference does it make? It's still 40+ ounces of beer to be consumed.
Yes. The container should make no difference, particularly when, as Major pointed out, you can buy larger containers of stronger stuff.
I never even would have thought that someone couldn't get a 750ml of Belgian beer...
We had a similarly stupid law in Florida up until 2001. Beer could only be sold in 8, 12, 16, or 32 ounce containers (after that it was OK). So we had almost no European beers and no 22 ounce bombers.
As I understand it the law was originally enacted in the late 50's to punish Miller for not putting their new brewery in Jacksonville, building it in Georgia instead. They had 7 (or was it 7.5?) ounce bottles.