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This study explores the relationship of the availability of alcohol to various deleterious behaviors and conditions to determine whether laws restricting legal access to alcohol result in a lower incidence of these phenomena. Two alcohol availability measures (city-county ordinance governing the sale of alcohol and number of alcohol outlets per 100,000 population) and five socio-demographic variables were used as independent variables to determine their relationship to the dependent variables of homicide rate, suicide rate, motor vehicle fatality rate, and liver mortality rate. The findings indicate that alcohol availability measures are almost uniformly negatively correlated with the dependent variables. The "forbidden fruit" concept was advanced to explain the findings and questions were raised concerning the effectiveness of utilizing alcohol regulatory measures to reduce alcohol-related problems.