“Don’t just think that this is going to be somebody calling on the phone about a bar down the street or their neighbor next door,” said Council member Keith Young. “This opens up a larger door. I am totally not comfortable opening up a new pathway into our criminal justice system.”
“I came back to the Southeast and suddenly my eyes were open to the native people around me, because I’d lived on a reservation and lived out west where there were so many different nations around us,” Kirstin Squint says.
Although the number of craft distilleries in Western North Carolina has increased significantly in recent years, business owners say state legislation is still hampering the growth of burgeoning industry.