Yesterday the California Board of Equalization made a troubling ruling that has the potential to threaten the production of all barrel-aged beer in the state. The changes were urged by neo-prohibitionists in their misguided attempt to have Alcopops taxed at the higher distilled spirits rate instead of as beer (or more technically malt-based beverages). But the language, perhaps unintentionally, makes it possible to be applied to any beer that’s been aged in a used wooden barrel. Here’s the relevant language from the ruling:

any alcoholic beverage, except wine, which contains 0.5 percent or more alcohol by volume from flavors or ingredients containing alcohol obtained from the distillation of fermented agricultural products will be classified as a distilled spirit for tax purposes.

Brewers will be “required” to “prove” their beer doesn’t meet that criteria, meaning they’ll have to submit a form for every current and new beer they produce, a ridiculous requirement at best. Effectively they’ll have to “prove” each beer they make is really a beer, and not something else. Guilty until they prove themselves innocent. And who better to monitor that than a tax organization, with little or no brewing knowledge? Since distilled spirits are taxed at a much higher rate, they’ll have no incentive whatsoever to act fairly. To me, this has disaster written all over it. In California, we’re facing a huge budget deficit and beer makes a convenient bogeyman to help pay for other people’s mistakes.

Also, under the ruling the Board of Equalization will give itself the authority to define and implement regulations applying to alcohol, a power previously reserved for the legislature (and enforced by the ABC). That, too, I find disturbing. Tax authorities regulating alcohol do not exactly have a good track record.

But let’s get back to calling a beer a distilled spirit just because it touched wood that used to have one in it. I can’t even fathom why, apart from economic greed, that makes any kind of sense. It’s just wrong on so many levels.

I may spend time abroad in a foreign land and be forever changed for the experience. Perhaps if I go for any length of time to … let’s say Canada, I might start paying closer attention to hockey, or even curling. Maybe I’ll start calling a case of beer a “two-four,” spelling colour with a “u,” hanging prints by one of the Gang of Seven in my home, or quoting Louis Riel, eh? But I’ll still be an American. The same is true for beer. A stout may spend years in a bourbon barrel, taking on rich vanilla character and other flavors from its time in the wood. But it will still be a 5% abv stout. To suggest it will turn into Maker’s Mark, even just for “tax purposes,” is an insult to common sense.

Aging beer in wooden barrels has, of course, become quite common and I’d say many, if not most, California craft brewers are making a beer of this type at least from time to time. And there are several that have made names for themselves with their barrel aged beers, such as Russian River and the Lost Abbey, to name two prominent ones. Their entire business will be under threat if the ABC decides to apply this ruling to these beers. The higher taxes will make them too expensive to produce.

The EU did something similar a year or so ago, when they tried to implement a requirement that all breweries meet a standard of cleanliness, inadvertently threatening all lambic breweries, whose wild yeast microcosms would have been destroyed under the proposed regulations. I’m pretty sure an exception was worked out, but the general public has a bit better appreciation for beer in Europe than on our shores.

Paranoid? Maybe, but I love these beers far too much to leave it to chance. Something needs to be done, but at this early stage I don’t even know what or who this can be appealed to. I’ll keep you posted. But I’m sure your local state representative will be involved. Find out who yours is now, and be ready to send him a letter or e-mail. Hopefully, I’ll have details soon on what we all can do.

According to a breaking news press release I received from the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has reached a verdict in the lower court’s earlier decision in Costco v. Hoen (Washington State Liquor Control Board), reversing a majority of it, which, according to the NBWA, “thereby affirm[s] the right of the states to regulate alcohol under the 21st Amendment – a system that works to protect the citizens of each state. While NBWA is still reviewing the totality of the Court’s opinion, it appears that state regulation has been validated.”

Disappointingly, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s report on this begins with the following loaded sentence. “A federal appeals court Tuesday dealt Costco Wholesale Corp. a setback on whether the giant warehouse club operator could lower prices of beer and wine for its customers.” I realize that was in the business section, but so much for impartiality. Swallowing Costco’s propaganda entirely, to say they sued the state so they could lower prices to consumers is at best not telling the whole story and at worst and out and out fabrication.

Of the nine laws and regulations Costco claimed restricted competitive practices, U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman agreed and ruled over a year ago in their favor. Today’s appeals ruling reversed eight of those, with the exception of the post-and-hold requirement. It appears likely that it may now be appealed to the Supreme Court. According to the PI, “The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said the state Liquor Control Board could prohibit discounts, ban central warehousing of beer and wine by retailers, require wholesale distributors to charge uniform prices to all retailers and require a 10 percent markup. The state had said if Costco won it could put into question the systems other states use to control alcohol consumption and safeguard the collection of taxes. At least 30 other states or jurisdictions had filed briefs in support of Washington.”

Reuters, on the other hand, more even-handedly stated that Costco “lost a bid on Tuesday to overturn Washington state liquor rules that control pricing and discounts.”

The Seattle Times and the Wall Street Journal have also now weighed in with stories of their own.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Costco’s 2006 triumph attracted a lot of attention because it suggested that major changes might be in store for the nation’s complex system of regulating alcohol sales. Changes in Washington state could have a ripple effect, because most states have similar laws.

Costco is challenging a regulatory architecture that dates to the repeal of Prohibition and was designed partly to discourage overconsumption of alcohol. Makers of alcoholic beverages sell to a distributor, which marks up the price and trucks it to a bar, restaurant or store, which then sells it to a consumer.

Costco is deciding whether to appeal the ruling. “We are pleased that the central part of the anticompetitive restraints provisions was struck down,” said David Burman, a Seattle-based lawyer handling the case for Costco, referring to the “post and hold” provisions. “It will be good for Costco members and other consumers.”

Seventeen other states have post-and-hold laws, Mr. Burman said. He added that he thinks Washington lawmakers “will likely” consider overturning other provisions.

Washington alcohol regulators may appeal the part of the ruling favoring Costco. “The state got a pretty good deal. It has to decide whether it can live with a regulatory scheme that sort of has one component plucked out and thrown away,” said Richard Blau, a lawyer who specializes in alcohol law with GrayRobinson, a Florida law firm. Regulators could leave it up to state lawmakers to address that aspect of the court’s decision.

The other reason that this so-called “regulatory architecture” was partly created, in addition to discouraging overconsumption, is to level the playing field among different sizes of businesses so that advantages were not given to larger businesses by virtue of their superior bargaining position and resources to make larger buys. That was the real reason Costco went after these laws, not because they were concerned that their customers might be paying too much for the beer and wine they sold. You’d have to be pretty blind to reality to swallow that one as their motivation, yet in mainstream media story after story that continues to be the reason stated.

There was an interesting item in yesterday’s USA Today called Frustration Over Liquor Laws Brewing. The story details just a few of the battles around the country to update their state’s antiquated alcohol laws, which in many cases haven’t been updated since Prohibition’s repeal in 1933. I’m sure the neo-prohibitionists will be fighting these tooth and nail, employing their usual bag of dirty tricks, but perhaps it’s finally time to stop playing defense and pick up the ball. In Mississippi, for example, it’s still illegal to sell beer in excess of 6% abv. The argument against raising it, predictably, is, according to William Perkins of the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board, that an “intellectual argument ignores the ill effects of alcohol.” Well, I’d sure hate for logic or intelligence to interfere with his world view, but you can buy wine and liquor in Mississippi already and, unless it’s some weird watered-down varieties, those are all well above 6% so please tell me how that makes any sense whatsoever? Not to mention there are plenty of positive health claims that can be made not only about beer, but the moderate use of alcohol in general. If Perkins’ thinking shows nothing else, it’s illustrative that logic plays no role at all in the anti-alcohol league’s canon. By any means necessary seems to be the only rule. So perhaps it’s time to mount an offensive. After all, a good defensive very well may be a strong offense.

The only explanation I can come up with for this is that Baptists must live in some kind of parallel universe. According to today’s Baptist Press, Baptists in Texas, and presumably everywhere else, are mobilizing their forces to protest a grave new threat to their youth. What horror could possibly be the cause of this dire situation that threatens not only their very way of life, but the very lives of their children? Apparently the theme park in Arlington, near Dallas/Fort Worth, Six Flags Over Texas, has applied for — gasp — a liquor license in order to sell beer at certain locations in the park.

Now I don’t want to make light of someone else’s cherished beliefs, but listen to what the Baptist Press is reporting:

“Do we really want to send our youth groups — our church youth groups — to places where alcohol is served?” local Christian leader Linda Rosebury asked in an interview with KCBI-FM, the radio station of Criswell College in Dallas.

Do you mean the world? Because the last time I checked alcohol could pretty much be found anywhere you look. Have they heretofore been living in some Utopian fantasyland where there is no alcohol, like Iran? Can they really be saying anywhere that alcohol might be found is a dangerous place? Yes, apparently.

The sale of beer, Rosebury said, threatens the park’s image as a safe place for families.

So the real world, where beer is sold each and every day, is unsafe? If so, why are those families still there? Do people really walk around, see some heathen drinking a beer, and decide that it’s no longer a safe place? I’m pretty sure that you could live right next door to someone who drinks and still feel perfectly safe. In fact, my own next-door neighbor no longer drinks, and I believe he doesn’t feel that I’m a threat by virtue of my proximity to him in any way, shape or form.

You can even get a beer at Disneyland, and if they can pull it off and maintain their annoyingly hypocritical squeaky clean image, why not Six Flags? Perhaps Disneyland is not part of the Baptist parallel world?

I realize I’m probably being insensitive, but I can’t help myself. I find this sort of nonsense so patently ridiculous that I can’t really take it seriously. If you don’t want your child to even “see” a beer, don’t let him go to Six Flags, make him a shut-in. Shield him from every imagined horror you perceive out there in the world. I’m sure he’ll turn into a terrific young man or woman, with no problems whatsoever. I would personally never abuse my own kids in that way, but I’m not about to tell you how to raise your children.

As of January 8, the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) has gotten 600 phonecalls and twelve letters of protest regarding Six Flags ability to sell beer to adults. On February 17, state officials will decide whether or not to hold a public hearing on their application and the Baptist Church is trying to get enough of its members to complain so that they’ll have the hearing.

Some of the current complainers are urging the TABC to “conduct an alcohol impact study to determine the threat to public safety.” Isn’t beer sold enough other places in the universe, including many other theme parks, that we can figure out with reasonable certainty what the impact would be? It would be zero, of course.

The people from Six Flags, naturally, have “pledged that such sales would be handled responsibly and would safeguard guest safety,” just like every other public place that serves such legal beverages as beer. In their own defense, Six Flags also offered the following.

Noting the park’s pledge to offer quality guest services, John Bement, Six Flags in-park services senior vice president, told the Southern Baptist TEXAN, “For quite some time, many of our guests have requested beer as an option while dining or visiting the park. In fact, several of the parks in the Six Flags system already provide such amenities and have done so successfully and responsibly for many years.”

How utterly reasonable. I’m sure that will mollify the faithful. Hardly, an attorney from the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention spells out exactly how to lodge a protest, and even offers some helpful legal arguments that one can use in their complaint.

Heaven forbid anyone with a different view of the world might want to go to Six Flags. Apparently this is their world, the rest of us just drink in it.

The Marin Institute, one of the more blunt and churlish of the anti-alcohol organizations, is mounting an offensive to raise alcohol taxes an incredible “25 cents per drink” in California. Their vision — my nightmare — is to bring about “communities free of the alcohol industry’s negative influence and an alcohol industry that does not harm the public’s health.” But as they naturally see any influence as negative and everything that the alcohol industry does as harmful, what they really want is nothing short of an another Prohibition.

Throughout their rhetoric (and even the sources they’re relying upon) is a call for “fairness” and for alcohol to pay its “fair share,” whatever that really means. But the carrot they’re holding out is that by doing so it would help to alleviate California’s budget deficit that’s been plaguing us for several years now. But I fail to see how raising the taxes of people who drink is in any way fair. Effectively what they’re suggesting is that because our state managed to get itself in a fix, budget-wise, people who drink should be called upon to foot the bill. They just want to punish those of us who choose to drink, and yet they call it fair? The first definition (of 26) for the word “fair” is “free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice.” There’s clearly bias, it’s dishonest in my opinion to claim it’s because of our state’s tax problems, and it hardly seems just to have drinkers pay a disproportionate share to get us out of our budget hole. So it’s really the very opposite of fair.

This is the same nonsense that’s going on with Indian gaming right now, with several state proposals on November’s ballot. We committed genocide against Native Americans and broke every single treaty we ever made. So when Indian gaming successfully exploited one of the few advantages left to them, we still can’t seem to let them be. This is the second time California politicians have tried to get (or more accurately extort) a bigger piece of their gambling revenues, and the exponents of these propositions try to sell them in the same way as the Marin Institute is doing with beer taxes, by twisting the idea of “fairness.”

Of course, the real reason they can say with a straight face that it’s fair to ask drinkers to pay more taxes than teetotalers is this odd notion that, in the words of David Leonhardt, “taxes serve a purpose beyond merely raising general government revenue. Taxes on a given activity are also supposed to pay the costs that activity imposes on society.” I’m not necessarily against this idea entirely, but I don’t understand when it became an unquestionable fait accompli and why people are so quick to believe it. Why is this only ever said of things that some people don’t like? The costs on society for our general obesity and unhealthiness has not brought about taxes on fast food, sugar or high fructose corn syrup. Hummers, SUVs and other similar gas-guzzling vehicles not only are not taxed at a higher rate but actually receive federal and state tax breaks and incentives and have lower standards of fuel efficiency than regular cars. With their poor MPG they do great harm to our society yet are actively subsidized and encouraged by our government over cars that get more miles per gallon and are kinder to the planet. Check out this Slate article for more on this. I’m not saying that’s as it should be, simply that this idea that all products must contain within their profit structure some tax scheme that balances the price with their damage to society caused by them is wholly fallacious.

But even if it wasn’t such a weak argument, we don’t charge a higher percentage of a person’s tax burden for the fire department if they live in a tinderbox house vs. an inflammable brick home. Instead we average the cost to society out and charge everyone the same amount since everyone gets the same potential benefit. That’s a fair arrangement in every sense of the word. It’s good for the whole town, not just for you, if your house does not burn down. So there’s really no reason why we can’t apply that same logic to the whole of society. I realize that will be unpopular with folks who don’t think it’s fair that while they choose to abstain, they may have to pay for problems supposedly caused my decision to drink. But if it’s legal for everyone who pays taxes (except, those 18-20 years old — hey, another reason they should be allowed) to drink then I don’t see why it’s so troubling that we all share the costs of society equally. You may think it’s unfair because you feel you’re not causing the (hypothetical) problem. Well I think you’re being selfish by only wanting to pay for services that that either benefit you or were caused by you. In a sense, it’s like after building your inflammable brick house you refuse to pay to support the fire department any longer under the theory that your house is in order.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t want to live in a world where everyone is so selfish that they don’t want to help other people. Look at this another way. The vast majority of drinkers do so in moderation and never are any burden to society whatsoever. But a tiny percentage of drinkers do cause problems for themselves and others. There are at least two ways we can shape policy to deal with problem drinkers. We can treat the causes of the problems and make tougher laws to deal with them, and only them. Or we can make it harder on everybody’s ability to drink, thus punishing everybody for the sins of the few. It’s not too difficult to figure out which approach the neo-prohibitionists have chosen. Even if only one in every ten-thousand persons who drink may exact a cost on society they would prefer to punish the other 9,999, too.

Another one of the contentions is that the last time California raised taxes on alcohol was 1992. That increase was apparently one cent on a glass of wine and two pennies for a bottle or can of beer and one shot of hard liquor. So clearly a 25-cent increase seems reasonable?!? Maybe sixteen years is too long without an increase, I’m not going to argue that point. But even if the tax had been raised another penny every year, the tax would still only be 16 cents higher today, so please tell me how 25 cents is a fair suggestion? Or are they just shooting for the moon in the hopes of a negotiation that ends up compromising higher as a result?

And if it’s tax fairness they’re after, taxes of corporations have fallen much more dramatically over the past several decades. They haven’t just stagnated and gone down merely by adjusting for inflation, but have actively been lowered. At the same time, personal taxes on the poor and middle-class have gone up while tax cuts for the rich keep increasing. So if the Marin Institute really cares about California’s budget crisis, I think a more prudent approach might be trying to raise corporate taxes across the board and removing unfair tax cuts and loopholes for the wealthiest among us. It wasn’t alcohol that got us into this mess, so why make it foot the bill.

One of the main sources that the Marin Institute cites for their proposal is Let’s Raise a Glass to Fairness, a polemic about why the author, David Leonhardt, believes federal alcohol taxes should be raised. Some of the supposed alcohol-related costs to society he cites are the following:

1. child abuse
2. drunken-driving checkpoints
3. economic loss caused by death and injury
4. hospital bills for alcohol-related accidents

So let’s look at those claims.

1. Child Abuse: This one’s a head-scratcher for me. Sure it sounds bad, but what does it really mean? I was terrorized as a child by an alcoholic, psychotic step-father but even as a kid I knew it wasn’t the alcohol that caused him to be that way. There were myriad things in his life that made my step-father such a mess, and alcohol was the least of them. At its worst it was merely a convenient catalyst. If alcohol had been removed from the situation, something else would have filled the void. I can’t see how alcohol causes child abuse any more than cake is directly responsible for obesity.

2. Drunken-Driving Checkpoints: If these are such a burden to our nation’s purse strings, then by all means stop them. They’re already an invasion of civil liberties because they randomly presume guilt of everyone behind the wheel of a vehicle. But saying these are a cost of alcohol seems weird to me. The fact is that police forces choose to do them, they aren’t mandatory, and they’re more often done because of politics or pressure from local neo-prohibitionist groups. So they aren’t caused by alcohol, they’re caused by people against alcohol. There are plenty of legitimate ways for the police to do their job in keeping potentially dangerous drivers off the road that don’t involve these checkpoints.

3. Economic Loss Caused by Death and Injury: Now I certainly don’t want to downplay or make light of anyone’s loss or injury, but the alcohol didn’t cause either. The idiot person who drank too much or otherwise couldn’t control himself is responsible for a death or injury that resulted from his actions. And he should be punished to the full extent of the law. But don’t punish me or my right to drink moderately because some yahoo couldn’t act responsibly.

4. Hospital Bills for Alcohol-related Accidents: This is the same as the last one, it’s economic harm inflicted by a person and we should be blaming the individual person. People scoff at the Twinkie defense, saying it’s ridiculous that too much sugar might cause a person to commit a crime, but here Leonhardt is saying effectively the same thing.

He also throws around a lot of statistics about how many people die each year in “alcohol-related car accidents” along with “other accidents, assaults or illnesses in which alcohol plays a major role.” But as we learn time and time again, the way “alcohol-related” is defined is usually pretty deceptive. Many such studies have considered an accident “alcohol-related” if one of the passengers had earlier been drinking so it’s pretty hard to take such stats very seriously. Do people die from causes related to alcohol? I’m sure they do. But the number one cause of death: living. What I mean by that is every single thing we do every single moment has some risk associated with it. It’s a fool’s errand to dissect every thing we humans do and determine which ones to tax more heavily.

Leonhardt likens his strategy to the same argument for higher tobacco taxes, saying for alcohol the impetus “is even stronger” with this gem. “Tobacco kills many more people than alcohol, but it mainly kills those who use the product.” Did I miss a meeting? Isn’t one of the strongest reasons for all the recent tobacco bans that second-hand smoke is far more dangerous to people around smokers than previously believed?

He then goes on to say. “Many alcohol victims are simply driving on the wrong road at the wrong time.” And that may be true, and it is certainly tragic, but why then is it fair that I should pay more for my beer because of other drunk drivers, especially if I and millions of other responsible drinkers don’t place anyone else at risk. If the argument for fairness is that all alcohol drinkers should pay more for their beer because of the costs that alcohol exacts on society, how then does that same logic explain why this burden is so unfairly placed on all drinkers and not just the problem drinkers? Isn’t that just a teensy-weensy bit hypocritical?

Leonhardt later admits, or at least accepts, that there are plenty of responsible drinkers around and even quotes Jeff Becker, President of the Beer Institute. “Most people — the vast majority of consumers — don’t impose any additional costs on anyone.” But in the end he concludes that since he can’t figure out a way to “tax only those people who were going to drive drunk in the future” then it’s somehow fairer to just tax everybody who drinks. Yeah, that makes sense. No wonder the Marin Institute loves this guy.

But another flaw in this theory is that raising taxes on alcohol will raise an additional $3 billion in tax revenue to help with California’s $14 billion current deficit. One of the major prongs of the Marin Institutes’s plan is that by raising the price of beer, drinking will be curtailed once again. If people are drinking less, then how will that result in more tax revenues? If this proposal was really about solving California’s budget crisis, wouldn’t it make more sense to raise alcohol taxes and then actively encourage drinking to help raise more money to apply to the deficit? But this never really was about taxes or California’s budget crisis. It was always about keeping people from drinking or at least making it harder for them to do so. But not enough people were apparently getting their message and were — gasp — still enjoying a drink now and again. So instead they dressed this proposal up as a panacea for our state’s budget crisis hoping that people might respond more favorably to that gambit. Don’t you believe it.

Look, we have the highest federal budget deficit in history and many states, including my own, have similarly terrible fiscal situations that they’re facing. But no matter how much junk science you throw at this problem, alcohol did not cause our current situation. As a result, trying to raise more taxes by arguing that it would be fairer for the nation’s alcohol drinkers to help pick up the tab is just ludicrous. Perhaps taxes should be higher across the board to get us out of this deficit and that might include alcohol taxes, too. But politicians don’t like to raise taxes generally because people tend to vote out of office any politician who tries to do so, no matter how vital they might be in paying for our infrastructure and making our society work for everyone. So we keep electing fiscal conservatives who slash and burn social programs. And then we wonder why there’s no unemployment available when we get laid off so that the factory we used to work for can relocate overseas and chain ten-year old girls to a sewing machine to slave away for twelve-hour days, seven days-a-week for peanuts just so we can be spared the injustice of paying a few cents more for some crap we don’t really need at Wal-Mart. Let’s not change that situation, let’s blame alcohol instead. Raise a glass to fairness, indeed. I’ll buy the first round.

There was an interesting little piece in Canada’s McGill Daily today, about their alcohol laws. I knew about them to some degree and was at least aware that beer from one province couldn’t necessarily be sold in another without a high tariff. Essentially it’s the same as if you couldn’t sell beer from Oregon in California without a ridiculously high tax that made, for example, Deschutes Black Butte Porter as expensive as Westmalle or Chimay. Naturally, it was done this way to protect local and regional businesses from outside competition but it seems weird that Canada would feel that way about their own provinces. But perhaps we just take the interstate commerce laws we have here for granted. Are the majority of other countries set up with porous state borders or are they protectionist? I’ve never really looked at that, does anybody know? I’ll be interested to hear what my Canadian friends think about this. Stephen? Alan? Greg? Anyone else?

I’m trying to catch up a little with interesting items sent in by Bulletin readers. Last week my cable modem went down and it took a few days for the cable company to come out and replace it, so I missed a few days. It continues to amaze me how dependent I am on internet access, far more than the telephone or cable television or even my car. Despite the fact that I was born when Eisenhower was President, it’s hard to remember what it was like before the internet was such a ubiquitous feature of our modern world. I feel naked without my laptop. Anyway, this comes from Doug in Hawaii (thanks Doug) and is the Wall Street Journal article about Larry Bell’s brewery and his distributor fight in Illinois. I saw the original Journal article when it came out, but I don’t have online access to the WSJ. Happily, it was reprinted on the free site Small Biz.

Beyond Bell’s specific travails, the larger issue of franchise laws is discussed. Franchise laws are one of those things that people in the industry are familiar with but which get very little public attention. They should, because by and large franchise laws are not good for small breweries. There, of course, exceptions — good distributors who care and do a god job with smaller breweries. But in my experience I’ve heard far more horror stories about distributor mistreatment of craft brewers than the other way around.

Distributors love franchise laws, of course, because for them, in many cases, they are a legal stranglehold and something of a disincentive for distributors to actually do a good job promoting a particular brand. In some states, Nevada for example, once a brewer signs up with a distributor, no matter how bad a job they do by law they cannot switch distributors without the distributor’s consent (something which is almost never given). My understanding is that franchise laws were originally enacted to protect distributor’s from spending years building a brand in a particular market only to have the brand go to a competitor. But in most states, distributors — which despite their rhetoric are large businesses — have deep pockets to lobby politicians and get favorable legislation to protect their business at the expense of smaller, weaker microbreweries. As the Wall Street Journal touches on, that balance of power is just beginning to shift slightly, but entrenched power tends to hang on far longer than anybody ever expects, so I’m not persuaded things will change for the better anytime soon.

I confess at the outset that this story has nothing to do with beer, but is about bourbon … sort of. But it is also about the assault on alcohol — and to some extent civil liberty — a subject I find myself writing about more and more these days, so that’s why I decided to write this. I certainly didn’t set out to make the neo-prohibitionists my cause célèbre, but I find that few things get me as worked up and angry than people whose sole mission appears to be telling the rest of us how to live. I guess that makes me an anti-control freak, or something.

At any rate, the story involved a St. Petersburg, Florida man named Evan Preston who local authorities have dubbed the “Woodstock Santa.” He’s been given this epithet by local authorities, and especially city council member Bill Foster, who hopes to stop Preston from giving gifts to the homeless. Now lest I paint Foster as a complete Scrooge, he’s apparently okay with giving them blankets or a warm bowl of soup. What he doesn’t like is that Foster gives the homeless what they really want: booze. The eccentric Evan Preston (at left in the long gray beard), age 72, owns a well-known jewelry and art store and has in the past helped the local community raise money for a variety of causes by donating artwork.

He’s apparently helped his town’s Make-A-Wish Foundation and also nearby Tampa’s Big Cat Rescue. Four years ago, he decided he wanted to do something for St. Petersburg’s growing homeless population that congregate around the downtown Williams Park, near his business. So for a few years now, he and several friends and colleagues pass out 100 bottles of bourbon and cigars to the homeless.

Here, let’s pick up the story from Tampa’s Creative Loafing website:

“At first, I thought it would be interesting to give out a six-pack and a cigar,” he says over a glass of homemade sangria in his kitchen. “When I saw the excitement in their faces, it was inspirational.”

After a few outings to various homeless enclaves around the city, he says, St. Pete’s homeless began to recognize him. When he pulled up in his Bentley, they would run at him, jump on the car and hug him tightly.

Preston became the homeless’ Santa Claus, a 6-foot-2 bearded Samaritan in a T-shirt and jeans who gave all the good street men and women what they really wanted for Christmas.

“Last time, a man came up and said, ‘Thank you, this is so much better than a warm blanket,’” he recalls. “It’s shocking how much everybody loves it.”

“There is no motive to what we do,” he says. “It’s a gesture of goodwill.”

Well, you just know something like that will not be permitted for very long, not without somebody trying to put a stop to it. And right on cue, Foster is appalled that someone might give alcohol to alcoholics. Part of his reasoning is that alcohol is what put them on the street in the first place. While that may be true in some cases, he really doesn’t know that with any certainty whatsoever. But the idea that not giving a homeless person that alcohol is somehow going to cure them or make their life any better seems ridiculous at best, and uncharitable and obnoxiously self-righteous at worst.

Apparently there’s already a local ordinance in force that prohibits passing out alcohol in public parks — which seems weird enough, why would that be a problem? — but the code does not apply to city streets or right of ways, a loophole that Foster is trying to close. He’s sent a memo to the mayor and other city council members urging them to make it illegal to hand out alcohol in essentially any public space. If you want to give your neighbor a bottle of wine this Christmas, you better be careful not to hand it to him on the sidewalk. Stay on your own property if you don’t want to break the law. Apparently it doesn’t matter that alcohol is legal for adults and giving gifts is likewise not a crime, but don’t put those two things together in Florida. Yeah, that seems reasonable.

In the memo Foster claims “Mr. Preston is an affront to every business owner and resident of the downtown area, and should not be a welcomed figure in St. Petersburg.” An affront? An affront is a “deliberate act or display of disrespect,” an “intentional slight.” I don’t know who Bill Foster thinks he is, but he obviously believes people should be bowing and scraping to his delusions of grandeur. Can he really have convinced himself that Preston is giving the homeless booze to personally offend him? This is a difference of opinion at best. I don’t see how it’s the business of government to regulate where citizens can commit a legal act like gift-giving? Foster may not like what Preston’s doing but in a free society that should be the end of it. But Bill Foster apparently believes a free society is only one where people do what he likes, and apparently he’s not even the only nut job on the city council.

“Is that really the best gift you can give somebody sleeping outside—bourbon?” said Rene Flowers. “I don’t know what a bottle of bourbon goes for these days, but I’m sure that would buy some soap, a small washrag, maybe a comb, some coffee, maybe a nice, hot meal.”

Where exactly would a homeless person use a washrag and soap exactly since they probably don’t have a bathtub for them to use there in Williams Park? And while a nice dinner does sound good, why does Flowers think that private citizens have to confine their charity to what she thinks is appropriate? For all their posturing, the homeless problem itself is never addressed by the city council, only that a private citizen shouldn’t be allowed to give them a little comfort from time to time at his own expense. It really doesn’t matter if you or anyone else thinks giving alcohol to a homeless person is a bad idea, in a free society any private citizen is and ought to be allowed to choose both the scope and nature of his charity. They should be applauding the fact that’s he’s doing something, anything. But from the response of the city council, they don’t seem overly concerned about the homeless people themselves. The very fact that there is such a homeless problem in this medium-sized town (the population is just under 250,000) suggests that whatever the city council is doing, if anything, it has not alleviated the situation or the conditions that caused these people to become homeless in the first place. Maybe it’s the guilt over their own failures that makes them lash out over someone merely trying to provide a little solace and comfort to someone whose life is, I can only assume, complicated and difficult, to say the least. But please, let’s stop attacking alcohol already, shall we? I’d like to get back to talking about beer again, thank you very much.

If you want to hear more about this, a local Tampa television, Tampa Bay 10, station did a report that’s online. Also, a Los Angeles radio station recently did an interview with Evander Preston which you can listen to online.
 

This interesting tidbit comes by way of the Fermenting Barrel via Tomme Arthur (thanks, Tomme), who knew my little crusading heart would appreciate the inanity of it all. It seems a new ordinance in the southern Utah town of Springville “requires beer displays be erected no closer than 15 feet from a store’s public entrance.” The Utah County Health Department’s Division of Substance Abuse also wanted retailers to keep all “beer 10 feet back from a store’s front windows,” too, but the City Council decided instead to just keep it away from the front doors. According to a story in the Salt Lake Tribune, “Richard Nance, substance-abuse division director, said the goal is to try to ensure that children do not get mixed messages about where the community stands on alcohol use.” What exactly is that mixed message he’s so worried about? Seriously, what is it? Anybody know? I mean, despite a huge religious influence in Utah, beer is still legal there, right? So what message is being sent by its proximity to the front door, for chrissakes?

Retailers, however, don’t appear too concerned about the new law — not that there’s much they could probably do anyway. Apparently most stores already keep their beer stock in the back of the store, which is also where most keep the milk, isn’t it? One added benefit, I suppose, is that less beer may be exposed to the light streaming through the front door, which may reduce skunking (hey, I’m looking for the silver lining here).

The Fermenting Barrel’s take:

Tell me this, are the kids absorbing the alcohol by being in the mere vicinity of a case of beer? Can’t the kids still walk to the back of the store and *gasp* be exposed to beer? Or are the children confined to the front of the store?

In my opinion there’s way worse things kids can be exposed to right at the counter, say…pornography, cigarettes, or even junk food, candy, and soda. Last I checked diabetes was one of the worst epidemics in the US. How does it usually develop? Through obesity caused from a poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle. How about going even a little further, what about all the easy access kids have to the crap on TV, the Internet, and movies.

OK, I’m done ranting. You get my point. There’s bigger fish to fry than fretting over kids walking past a case of beer when they walk in a store. Just leave it to Utah to come up with even more insane alcohol laws. As if their laws weren’t already weird enough.

Amen, brother.

One of my favorite things about the internet, is how cyclical and serpentine it can be. You can start out somewhere and if you follow enough tangents — something I can’t frankly help — you end up in new and wonderful places or, at a minimum, at a place you either didn’t expect to find or didn’t know was out there. I find a lot of the things I write about by happy accident. One thing leads to another and before I know it I’ve stumbled yet again on something I think worth writing about myself. A good example of this is some new laws in North Carolina that took effect December 1. I learned of these new laws through a blog, The Agitator, which I found at another blog, Coffee and Diapers, which is a parenting blog that picked up on my earlier post about Mothers For Social Drinking (which I also originally found by accident).

At any rate, the original story came from a television station in the Raleigh-Durham area, WRAL Channel 5, which is a place I actually lived for several years. I used to be, in the early 1980s, a record buyer for a large chain of stores headquartered in Durham, North Carolina and lived in both Durham and later Chapel Hill. Having grown up in the northeastern state of Pennsylvania, being in the south was a real eye-opener, but that’s a story for another day.

Anyway, some forty new state laws went into effect at the beginning of December and their story addressed a few of them. They started out with the alcohol-related ones for whatever reason and there’s a couple of doozies. The first one that caught my attention I’m not really against per se, but I think it’s illustrative of how oddly people think about alcohol. From the WRAL story:

One law bans devices known as “alcohol inhalers,” which convert liquor into a mist that can be inhaled by the user. Lawmakers were concerned that the devices, which were assembled and distributed by a Greensboro company, were being marketed to underage drinkers.

Okay, to be clear, I think this sounds like a bad idea and it goes against my personal philosophies on the moderate enjoyment of alcohol and also because I’ve never been a fan of anything that has to enter my body through my nose. I knew plenty of people in the 1980s who disagreed with my personal nasal entry ban (my rhinoprohibition), but I never begrudged them their day in the snow. So okay, somebody figured out a way to snort alcohol. I wouldn’t do it myself, and I can’t understand why anyone else would want to either. But here’s what I really don’t get. “Lawmakers were concerned (my emphasis) that the devices were being marketed to underage drinkers.” Huh? So they decided that an ostensibly legal product should be made illegal precisely because minors might try to buy it. Let me put that another way. As an adult, I can no longer buy a (previously) legal product because law enforcement cannot effectively keep people (minors in this case) from illegally obtaining it. So effectively because they can’t stop underage use of this product, they’re willing to take away every adult’s right to buy it. Please tell me how that makes any sense whatsoever? That is about as ridiculous a justification for making something illegal as I’ve ever heard. Fast food is marketed to kids and demonstrably terrible for their health, yet I don’t see these same lawmakers rushing to ban Big Macs, Whoppers or happy meals. Soda is even worse, yet schools allow soft drink companies to put soda vending machines in schools. Apparently, that’s okay too. I guess it’s okay for our kids to be fat and toothless but heaven forbid they might even consider snorting a mist of alcohol despite the fact that it’s already against the law for them to do so. Just the possibility of that — there do not appear to be any actual facts of underage use — makes them locate their spines to “protect the children” and take one more step toward making their state fit only for children. How noble. How absurd.

But the one that got The Agitator worked up — and I can certainly see why — is this one:

Also, as of Saturday, people can lose their driver’s licenses for providing alcohol to anyone under 21. The penalty is important because many underage drinkers get alcohol from friends or family members, said Craig Lloyd, the executive director of the North Carolina chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

The law means that, theoretically, parents could be punished for giving a glass of wine to their 20-year-old son or daughter, even if the 20-year-old never gets behind the wheel.

Lloyd said that’s not excessive.

“It’s a zero-tolerance policy,” he said. “Breaking the law is breaking the law.”

As Radley Balko at the Agitator put it:

I know what you’re thinking. Surely authorities would never barge into someone’s home and arrest them for allowing their 18, 19, or 20-year-old son or daughter to have a beer, right?

Well, you’d think. But then, if you’d told me police might come to the home of a minor’s parents at 4 am, wake the entire family, then give the girl a breath test to see if she had been drinking at a party held hours earlier, I’d have been dubious, too.

But it’s happened. Never underestimate the absurd lengths to which the zero tolerance crowd will go to keep your kid stone-cold sober.

The link above is to an ALCU story from Michigan where apparently they’re the only state — for now, at least —where it’s “illegal for young adults and minors who are not driving to refuse a breathalyzer test when the police do not have a search warrant. Those who refuse to take tests in Michigan are guilty of a civil infraction and must pay a $100 fine.” under Mich. Comp. Laws § 436.1703(6).

And there was at least one instance that you can just see being repeated both there and in North Carolina, as well.

Ashley Berden was 18 years old when she attended a party at a friend’s house to celebrate her graduation from Swan Valley High School. After she left the party, Thomas Township police officers arrived and found her purse which she had forgotten. They then came to Berden’s house at 4:00 a.m., woke up her family and demanded that she take a breath test. The police did not have a warrant but they informed her that would be violating the law if she refused the test. The test registered a .00% blood-alcohol level, indicating that Berden had not been drinking.

Pretty scary stuff. Especially when you consider that in societies where parents are allowed to raise their own children as they see fit, there is a much lower incidence of abuse later in life. But this new North Carolina law will make any parent who gives their own son or daughter even a taste of beer or wine to educate them a criminal. In effect, the state of North Carolina has decreed they can do a better job of raising your children than you can. Naturally, the North Carolina chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving sees the world in stark black and white whereas the rest of us can see all the shades of gray that parenting really entails. Because it seems to me that they really believe they can do a better job of raising my child than I can. They seem to have all the answers and really believe they know best. In their world an adult is no longer an adult but must live in a world where anything unsafe for children is no longer allowed for adults, either. In their world, a parent has little or no control over how and what they can teach their children about the world. That’s what zero-tolerance really means. It means tolerating only one way of life over all others. That’s as scary a world as I can imagine, a world that is the very opposite of free.

Today is the 74th anniversary of the repeal of national Prohibition in the United States. Bob Skilnik has, naturally, the most complete account at his Beer In Food blog. His piece is called “National Prohibition; Its REAL Anniversary” and goes into great detail about the history swirling about at that time. It’s definitely worth a read.

In addition, Eugene, Oregon bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler has been leading an effort to make December 5 a holiday and he’s also set up a Repeal Day website. And Dewar’s is also running a Repeal Day promotion to celebrate the day (and sell some whisky, of course). Seems like a good idea to me, we can never have too many holidays to remind us what a bad idea Prohibition was, especially with the neo-prohibitionists of today trying so hard to bring about another one.

Revelers enjoying the repeal of Prohibition in 1933.
 

Maybe it’s just my peculiar sense of humor but anytime I hear the phrase “spot the … anything” I think of Monty Python, as in “Spot the Looney.” So that was my first thought when I heard that Britain’s Home Office had issued very specific guidelines to members of the police on “How to Spot a Drunk.”

A few days ago the UK’s Home Office launched a new campaign against — and here’s the part I don’t get — being drunk in a bar. It’s called the “Responsible Sales of Alcohol Campaign” and British and Welsh police have apparently identified 1,500 pubs that they will be visiting every weekend between now and Christmas Eve to make sure that no bartender “knowingly” sells any alcohol to someone who is drunk. To me, that’s already a weird law (more on that below) but it’s been on the books for awhile now, though up until now there’s been no shortage of confusion about exactly what it means, legally at least, to be drunk. Anyone found selling to a drunk person will be levied “an £80 fixed-penalty fine.” But now the Home Office has issued more specific guidelines trying to define drunkenness. They have no legal standing, of course, but they are asking the police to use them to “identify potential drunken customers” and then “gather evidence of drunkenness, witness a sale and deal accordingly”. So even though it’s claimed that they do not have actual legal standing, if the police are using the guidelines, as they’ve been asked to, then they de facto do have standing.

Here’s the part I don’t get, though. If you can’t be drunk in a pub, where exactly are you allowed to be drunk? Since when is it the business of the police to decide how pissed anyone wants to get on any given evening? I think in many states here a bartender’s not supposed to serve a person if they’re excessively drunk — equally difficult to gauge and define. But this law makes it sound like you are permitted to go to a pub, order a beer, drink it, perhaps have another, but the moment you’re drunk you have to stop drinking immediately or the pub owner will face a hefty fine. That doesn’t make any sense to me. Assuming I’m not bothering anyone else and as long as I’m walking, taking a taxi or otherwise not endangering anyone but myself how the f@#k is that anyone’s business but mine? I should be able to drink until I can’t stand up straight if I want to. I’m not saying that’s a good idea or that anyone should want to drink that much, but the point is simply that it should not be the government’s business to protect me from myself. That’s what friends and loved ones are for. That’s paternalism at it’s worst.

So here are the guidelines:

A Noticeable Change in Behaviour

• Bad tempered, aggressive;
• Offensive language;
• Becoming loud, boisterous or disorderly;
• Becoming physically violent;
• Becoming incoherent;
• Slurring, or making mistakes in speech; and
  becoming argumentative.

A Lack of Judgment

• Being careless with money;
• Annoying other persons, employees etc;
• Exhibiting inappropriate sexual behaviour;
• Drinking quickly or competitively (”down in one“)

Clumsiness & Loss of Coordination

• Swaying;
• Staggering;
• Difficulty with walking;
• Falling down;
• Bumping into furniture;
• Spilling drinks;
• Difficulty in picking up change; and
  Fumbling for cigarettes, or other items

Decreased Alertness

• Drowsiness, dozing or sleeping;
• Rambling conversation;
• Loss of train of thought;
• Difficulty in paying attention;
• Not understanding what is said;
• Glassy eyes and
• Lack of focus.

Appearance

• Unkempt
• Dishevelled

I think you’ll agree after perusing his list that many of the items here are obvious and self-evident. Defining being drunk is a bit like pornography: it may be hard to define but we all think we know it when we see it. But others make almost no sense at all, especially by themselves. This story originally appeared in the British trade publication, The Publican, and many of the pub owners they interviewed agreed, to wit:

Licensees have slammed the guidelines. David Wine, licensee at the Six Bells in Felsham, Suffolk, said: “This is an absolute nonsense. So what if someone is dishevelled? Does that mean Bob Geldof will not be able to get served in pubs?”

Steve Andrews, licensee at the Seven Stars in Devon agreed the campaign was “absolutely ludicrous”. “I have a lot of farmers and builders come in here and they’re dishevelled.”

“I would also question why police should be paid to sit around in pubs on a Friday and Saturday night.”

Yeah, that disheveled one does stand out. It’s as if you’ll have to dress up to go to your local if you want to be served. Since when does good grooming and a fashion sense equate with soberness? The “bumping into furniture” and “spilling drinks” would give my wife some trouble, as she tends to be quite clumsy without the slightest amount of alcohol in her bloodstream. Even if any of these aren’t dispositive, they will undoubtedly get you noticed by the bar Bobby as someone who bears closer watching. And that hardly seems fair: targeting the butterfingered and slovenly for special attention. Don’t they already have enough to worry about?

Overall, looney does seem the right word to describe this scheme to keep barkeeps from overserving to enforce a law that seems quite odd in the first place. Can this really be the most important thing Britain’s police force has to contend with right now? Surely there must be some more serious threats to the peace.