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Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

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Re: Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

#11

Post by verboten »

sophacles wrote: post #6

It's even worse than that... I live in Illinois, a state where there are not statewide quotas... however: The cities have the ability to add extra licensure requirements, so quotas can and do exist at the city level. Further, there are strange rules about entry to taverns - for example age of entry need not be legal drinking age which differ by city. There are also city or even smaller administrative district rule ov…

Regarding the age of entry, I recently walked past a bar in Chicago with a posted minimum age of 23. This struck me as odd (and somewhat offensive). I did a few searches, but had trouble locating any relevant information. Do you happen to know if the legislation provides insight into this sort of practice?

Re: Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

#12

Post by jstalin »

twic wrote: post #10

Okay, what the heck is with this business of secondary markets for licenses in the US? You can sell a liquor license? You can sell a taxi license (aka medallion)? Why? How does treating licenses as property make any legal sense, or serve any public good? In the UK, if you want to sell booze from your shop, you write to the council and apply for a license. They check you and your shop out, and if you seem okay, they g…

Here's a decent history on why the US liquor laws are the way they are: http://reason.com/archives/2014/06/04/how-not-to-legalize-a-...

These licensing schemes have become nothing more than rent-seeking by those established with existing licenses.

Re: Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

#14

Post by scarecrowbob »

tribaal wrote: post #8
sejje wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the problem with home-distilling?

Methanol.

Having done a bit, honestly, you really can't drink anything that you wouldn't get if you were making beer or wine, and most folks don't like drinking formaldehyde or acetone by themselves, so the foreshots get pulled off... so there really is no risk in going blind or something.

The idea that you can go blind off this stuff has more to do with propaganda and poisoning folks:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...

Re: Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

#15

Post by jal278 »

The piece provides several examples of regulatory capture [1], where concentrated efforts by private interests overcome diffuse interests of the public for their own profit.

The problem is that while a private interest group can focus all their efforts on one issue, the public has many diverse interests and has to be on guard against all the possible private interest groups at all times.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

Re: Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

#16

Post by ceejayoz »

verboten wrote: post #11
sophacles wrote: post #6

It's even worse than that... I live in Illinois, a state where there are not statewide quotas... however: The cities have the ability to add extra licensure requirements, so quotas can and do exist at the city level. Further, there are strange rules about entry to taverns - for example age of entry need not be legal drinking age which differ by city. There are also city or even smaller administrative district rule ov…

Regarding the age of entry, I recently walked past a bar in Chicago with a posted minimum age of 23. This struck me as odd (and somewhat offensive). I did a few searches, but had trouble locating any relevant information. Do you happen to know if the legislation provides insight into this sort of practice?

That strikes me as illegal age discrimination...

Re: Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

#17

Post by Zigurd »

tribaal wrote: post #8
sejje wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the problem with home-distilling?

Methanol.

You don't get methanol from distilling. Methanol is found in denatured alcohol. Methanol poisoning comes from drinking denatured alcohol. Kind of like how they put acetaminophen in some narcotic painkillers. Really, the people who designed such ghoulish "deterrents" should be held accountable for the deaths they contributed to.

Re: Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

#18

Post by enjo »

robflynn wrote: post #9
mhurron wrote: post #2

I love Blue Laws and States that dictate what can be sold in State run liquor stores. No no, really, I have exactly the same taste as some random guy in the state capital.

When I lived in Columbia, SC, we couldn't buy anything on Sunday mornings before noon. There were a few exceptions, mostly stuff like food and medicine. I tried to buy a broom and some cleaning supplies at 11am and every store that I went to told me to come back in an hour. I felt like I was being punished for not being a church goer. It was an odd experience.

I lived in a 100% dry county when I went to college. It was about 22 miles to reach the nearest liquor store.

Which of course had unintended consequences. We drank. Fraternities turned into de-facto bars. We would pool our money on a Thursday and make the 35 minute drive to the liquor store. We'd typically spend $1500-$2000 on booze and truck it back to campus. The idea was the buy the booze we'd need for the weekend. We'd typically be completely out by sometime on Friday.

At that point some drunk college kid would decide to drive 22 miles to buy more booze. My university had multiple drunk driving fatalities every year because of this.

It's better now (restaurants can serve booze finally), but I'll never understand why that law existed in the first place.

Re: Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

#19

Post by e40 »

robflynn wrote: post #9
mhurron wrote: post #2

I love Blue Laws and States that dictate what can be sold in State run liquor stores. No no, really, I have exactly the same taste as some random guy in the state capital.

When I lived in Columbia, SC, we couldn't buy anything on Sunday mornings before noon. There were a few exceptions, mostly stuff like food and medicine. I tried to buy a broom and some cleaning supplies at 11am and every store that I went to told me to come back in an hour. I felt like I was being punished for not being a church goer. It was an odd experience.

I felt like I was being punished for not being a church goer

That's exactly it, but it's a little odd the stores were open to tell you to come back in an hour.

Re: Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

#20

Post by endersshadow »

lvh wrote: post #7

As a (western) European, these laws strike me as completely unnecessary and obviously damaging. The union's ad (page 2) makes no sense at all. Kids here aren't dying by the bunch, and I'm pretty sure I can buy all kinds of booze (from mixed fizzy drinks to beer and wine to hard liquor to everclear) in any arbitrary convenience store...

Sigh.

Yes, yes, we know. All of the laws, customs, and cultural traditions in western Europe are much more rational/intelligent/better/whatever than those in America.

The real story, as usual, turns out to be fairly complex. Americans have a very odd and unique history with alcohol. Most notably was the temperance movement [1], which really started all of this hullabaloo. This caused an amendment to our Constitution...something tough to do and even tougher to undo. And yet, eleven years later, it was repealed (thankfully).

But, and here's the big but: To temper the temperance movement (which, by the way, had proven considerable political power), there were these crazy laws that were enacted to limit alcohol buying. The predecessor to the ATF was born [2]. And things like the 3-tier system were created, along with all sorts of bans on homebrewing and whatnot.

Essentially all of the regulations on alcohol have their roots in either the temperance movement or the anti-drunk driving movement (i.e.-MADD), which is a neo-temperance movement. Most of them were political concessions. Anymore, folks have profited tremendously off of artificial supply limitations, and they seek to keep those limitations in place by lobbying (quite effectively) against repeal or reform.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperance_movement_in_the_Uni...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Alcohol,_Tobacco,_Fi...

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