Bottom Of The Barrel

Something to WINE about

Ballot Question1 for next Tuesday's Election is a proposed law would allow local licensing authorities to issue licenses for food stores to sell wine. Some of the interesting items within the proposed law include:

- A “food store” is defined as a retail vendor, such as a grocery store, supermarket, shop, club, outlet, or warehouse-type seller, that sells food to consumers to be eaten elsewhere.
- Licensing authorities in any city or town of up to 5000 residents could issue up to 5 licenses for food stores to sell wine. In cities or towns of over 5000 residents, one additional license could be issued for each additional 5000 residents [note my town gets an additional 10 licenses, check out this list for your town].
- No person or business could hold more than 10% of the total number of the licenses that could be issued under the proposed law.
- Any applicant for a license would have to be approved by the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission.
- Local authorities could set fees for issuing and renewing such licenses.

The grocers argue they will save us money and be more convenient while the liquor stores state there will be more under-age drinking and drunk driving issues. Both are only trying to protect or enter a specific market space to make money and who can blame them, it's the American Way!

Out of all of this, the issue of this added convenience leading to more under-age drinking and/or more drunk driving deaths is one that should be investigated. So I asked the Vote No On 1 folks the following question:

You state on your website that "Sting operations in other states show that convenience stores allowed underage buying 52% of the time while dedicated package stores failed to stop underage buying only 15% of the time." If this question was to fail, would the Vote No on One Committee then take up the cause to lower this failure rate or is 15% an acceptable percentage? If that is the plan beyond November 7, what specifically would be done to curb under-age drinking?

Interestingly enough I got a response but, as with many political things, without any specific answers to my posed questions. They wrote:

"I see your point, ideally underage drinkers would be allowed to purchase alcohol 0% of the time. However, 15% is still much better than 52%. I have no doubt that if this initiative passes on November 7th the law enforcements officials, legislators, and package store owners that are working together to stop the initiative will focus their efforts on dealing with the dramatic increases in outlet density. Unfortunately, they will have their work cut out for them b/c there is no funding attached to this proposal to help local law enforcement police all of the new outlets, despite the fact that it could potentially double the number of outlets in the state."

So I guess that's a no and if the law does not pass, they will leave well enough alone. So my conclusion is that the scare tactics being played out in the media are only being done to protect the winopoly they currently have on the market. I am putting the full support of this blog and my dedicated readership behind question 1 and I'll see y'all down at the grocery store in the new wine aisle. And just for the record, I am NOT drinking merlot!

posted by TheWino @ 4:20 PM