Carlsbad, New Mexico: No Longer a Bud Light Kind of Town

Even with the InBev buyout of Anheuser-Busch last year, it's safe to say that St. Louis will forever be a Budweiser town.

The same cannot be said for Carlsbad, New Mexico. Following public outcry, the city's A-B distributor covered up a billboard this week that greeted motorists to Carlsbad with the message: "Bud Light: Our Kind of Town."

Yesterday the New Mexico county's DWI program coordinator, Cindy Sharif, told the Carlsbad Current-Argus: "We don't disagree that beer companies have the right to advertise...It's just not the kind of image we want to project about our town."

Evidently, Ms. Sharif, does not subscribe to the old "ham-sandwich defense" that Anheuser-Busch has used to successfully keep Missouri as one of the few -- if only -- states to not have an open container law. The defense suggests that so long as the driver is not intoxicated, drinking a beer while driving is no more dangerous than eating a ham sandwich while driving.

That is, of course, unless you're in Carlsbad.