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RANKIN INLET - A plebiscite to allow the purchase and resale of beer without a special occasion permit in Rankin Inlet has been put on the back burner until this coming fall.

Supporters of the change to liquor laws had hoped it would go to the people much sooner, but the legislative assembly won't have time to go over the information until later this year.

The plebiscite is being pushed by members of the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 169 in Rankin.

Manager Arnie Brown said there are far better ways for the Legion to be spending money than on an endless stream of permits.

He said the Rankin Branch wants to be able to purchase one yearly permit, rather than eight separate permits each month.

"The current law says you can't purchase beer within 25 km of town, even though you can have all you want as long as you get it from somewhere else," said Brown.

"We're open on Friday and Saturday nights, so that's $800 a month in special occasion permits, which works out to about $9,000 per year.

"That money would be better spent being donated back into the community.

"We already do a big Canada Day barbecue, purchase bikes for the drop-in centre and support the cadet program annually, and we'd rather do something useful like that with the $9,000 we're spending on permits every year."

Brown said a yearly business permit would cost somewhere in the neighbourhood of $250 to $300, which represents a significant savings for the Legion.

He said the change would also mean a substantial reduction in the amount of time it takes to prepare cheques and paperwork for about 90 special occasion permits a year.

"We've been running a Legion here now for about 15 years and this should have been dealt with long ago.

"We found too many people would binge drink back when we were only open two or four days a month, so we opened it up two nights a week so we'd be able to control the drinking more.

"Because people come out on different nights now, it's also become a lot more of a social setting than people just wanting to get drunk.

"So the yearly permit would help in a number of areas, but the main one is still the fact we'd rather use that $8,000 a year to help worthy causes in Rankin Inlet than having it go to Iqaluit."