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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

#31

Post by Pxtl »

lucisferre wrote: post #24

You should try Canada's laws for a while. Some of the highest taxes on alcohol in the world, almost no province allows drinking outside homes or licensed establishments (so be prepared for a $300+ fine for having wine at a picnic). All of this managed through archaic licensing systems run by bureaucratic power-tripping morons.

Ontario takes it one step further, even. We have a government run monopoly on liquor and wine sales (the LCBO) and a non-government-run government-protected monopoly on beer sales (the Beer Store).

To make that clear: the only company that is allowed to run a beer store in Ontario is The Beer Store. The Beer Store is owned by an association of InBev (Belgian company) and Molson/Coors (headquarters in Denver).

So Ontario has a government-protected beer retail monopoly that isn't even run by Canadians.

We just had an election. The Beer Store issue was completely ignored by all major parties.

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

#32

Post by Permit »

dublinben wrote: post #23
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…

Licenses become valuable property when they become scarce. In every US municipality I'm aware of, the supply for both liquor licenses and Taxi medallions is tightly restricted. When you simply cannot get a new license by applying to the appropriate authority, it begins to make sense to pay tens of thousands of dollars to adopt an existing license.

I think the parent was asking why the licenses were transferable. I can't sell my driver's license to an aspiring driver, why should I be able to sell a taxi license or a liquor license?

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

#33

Post by gallerytungsten »

sejje wrote: post #5
bencollier49 wrote: post #3

It made sense until he advocated home-distilling.

What's the problem with home-distilling?

Among other reasons, it's relatively easily to have a catastrophic fire. Unlike winemaking and brewing, where your end product will be in the range of 4% to 13% ABV, which generally won't burn, you can easily distill to 150 proof (75% ABV) with a simple pot still (or 190 proof with a column still).

150 proof is a highly flammable liquid. The vapor is flammable. If you have a vapor leak it can ignite. The flame is invisible. In other words, it's not something to take lightly.

In the micro distilling industry, I personally know of a half dozen fires over the past couple years. It's easy for something to go wrong very, very quickly.

Here is an article on the most recent fire: http://newsok.com/blast-rocks-moore-distillery/article/49079...

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

#35

Post by ThomPete »

lucisferre wrote: post #24

You should try Canada's laws for a while. Some of the highest taxes on alcohol in the world, almost no province allows drinking outside homes or licensed establishments (so be prepared for a $300+ fine for having wine at a picnic). All of this managed through archaic licensing systems run by bureaucratic power-tripping morons.

Why not try laws from countries that aren't worse.

Some European countries have a fairly sensible approach.

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

#36

Post by Spooky23 »

endersshadow wrote: post #20
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.…

Actually the root issue there predates temperance by a wide margin. The US governments primary revenue sources in the early days were tariffs and excise taxes, particularly taxes on alcohol.

Alcohol is a great commodity to tax because stills require lots of sugar, grain and barrels and thus are/were very easy to spot. Even today, the ATF will drop by for a visit if you're purchasing large quantities of sugar, and you'll have a hard time buying lots of sugar without identifying yourself.

Many states followed a similar model, so there is a historically ancient precedent of such regulation. Temperance and post-prohibition regulation added more layers.

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

#37

Post by sswezey »

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?

It may be a college thing, they want to prevent college students and/or handed-down fake IDs from college students.

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

#38

Post by dragonwriter »

gress wrote: post #27
dublinben wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Licenses become valuable property when they become scarce. In every US municipality I'm aware of, the supply for both liquor licenses and Taxi medallions is tightly restricted. When you simply cannot get a new license by applying to the appropriate authority, it begins to make sense to pay tens of thousands of dollars to adopt an existing license.

That only answers why they are valuable, not why they are property . It is the issuing authority that intentional makes licenses into property by honoring them after they have been transferred. The quesion is, why are these licenses honored after a transfer?

There's two aspects to the kinds of licensing at issue: (1) Quantitative limits, and (2) Substantive requirements (which vary by specific license) that limit who can use the license.

Letting licenses be transferrable is a way of limiting the public-agency workload in managing #1, because you then have less work managing a queue of pending-availability license requests at the public agency.

Even where license are transferrable, the recipient generally has to submit paperwork to the agency and be approved that the meet the appropriate requiremetns related to #2 before they can use the license.

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

#39

Post by eli »

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…

It's hard to make blanket statements about the US, it varies quite a bit by state, county, and municipality (that's part of the point.)

Around me, the process is (theoretically) similar to how you describe: you make an application to a local body of elected officials, there's a hearing, and they deny or approve it. Neighbors have an opportunity to object or seek concessions. And I don't think you can really sell a license.

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

#40

Post by rdmcfee »

lucisferre wrote: post #24

You should try Canada's laws for a while. Some of the highest taxes on alcohol in the world, almost no province allows drinking outside homes or licensed establishments (so be prepared for a $300+ fine for having wine at a picnic). All of this managed through archaic licensing systems run by bureaucratic power-tripping morons.

Only this year did BC announce they would remove legislation which outlawed having happy hour specials.
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