A Story of Baldfaced Corruption in Virginia's Alcohol Regulatory Industry
...Or, "how to become of coward for the low, low price of $65,000".
Government doing the bidding of industry is called “Regulatory Capture”. Another word for it is “corruption”. Sometimes, particularly in the alcohol beverage industry, corruption is easily spotted. Sometimes it happens behind closed doors.
Virginia is a particularly corrupt state where alcohol beverage regulation and commerce are concerned. I want to show you how that corruption works.
THE BILL
Earlier this year, a bill—HB 1655—was introduced in the State’s House of Delegates. It offered a simple change to the Virginia alcohol beverage law. If passed, it would have allowed employees of Virginia breweries to work shifts at bars and restaurants serving drinks. The caveat was that while doing so they would not be allowed to be in a position to promote or purchase their employer’s products or work to exclude the sale of competitors’ products.
What is notable about this proposed law, besides it being good labor policy by providing more opportunities for citizens to augment their income, is that it revealed that under the current Virginia alcohol beverage law, it is illegal for employees of breweries to work at businesses located in either the wholesale or retail tiers. This restriction is a vestige of the immediate post-Prohibition lawmaking that sought to prevent producers (and particularly brewers) from controlling the operations and sales of retailers as occurred before Prohibition. That is to say, this current Virginia ban on employees of brewers working for bars or restaurants (or even wholesalers) is the very definition of “archaic.”
It should have passed easily with no controversy. But it didn’t. Let me explain why.