There Is No Public Support for Alcohol Anti-Shipping Laws

So why are we surprised and shocked when consumers keep ordering it?

“In the end intelligent lawmaking rests on the knowledge or estimate of what will be obeyed. Our traditional belief in the efficacy of law as a means of social control resulted in hundreds of liquor statutes which were unenforced and largely unenforceable, either because they did not represent public opinion or because the public opinion they did represent was not sufficiently preponderant in the community.”

This was not written by me in a rant about unjust wine shipping laws. It was written in 1933 by the authors of “Toward Liquor Control”, considered the bible of post-Prohibition alcohol regulatory principles.

It’s a statement on the limited effect lawmaking can have even on good people when those laws don’t reflect a community consensus. Of course, written as it was in 1933, it is also a commentary on one of the reasons for the failure of Prohibition. But more importantly, it is the authors of the influential “Toward Liquor Control” warning lawmakers that in the wake of the Repeal of Prohibition, they need to be mindful of what the governed will accept and therefore embrace as law.

I’m always reminded of this wise admonition written nearly 100 years ago when I hear a state attorney general or state wine and spirit wholesaler association representative simultaneously crow over catching out-of-state shippers delivering booze illegally to consumers in a state and also condemning those alcohol shippers for “bootlegging”.

What is never mentioned in the handwringing and crowing is that the alcohol that was illegally shipped into the state was ordered by a resident of the state. The stuff wasn’t shipped unsolicited. Those crowing never ask the question, why did their resident 1) feel the need to go out of state to obtain the alcohol they wanted and 2) why did they appear to have no compunction jumping into the middle of an illegal activity?

If attorneys general or wholesalers did ponder this question, the answer would surely be disheartening…or at least should be.

The most recent crowing and handwringing came out of North Carolina:

“North Carolina beer and wine distributors applaud the ongoing efforts of N.C. authorities to stop the illegal shipment of alcohol into the state, according to a news release from the N.C. Beer & Wine Wholesalers Association….The N.C. Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission has mailed a series of cease-and-desist letters to at least a half-dozen out-of-state retailers that have been caught illegally shipping spirituous liquor into North Carolina….Tee Nunnelee of Coastal Beverage in Wilmington, chairman of the N.C. Beer & Wine Wholesalers Association, says, “The illegal sale and shipment of liquor into North Carolina is an end-around of the payment of N.C. taxes while potentially opening the door for underage sales and endangering product safety.”

North Carolina wholesalers really don’t care about unpaid taxes. Nor do they really believe that the shipment of alcohol into their state opens the door to underage sales or the entrance of endangering products. No one even believes they believe this. It’s all pretense. What they care about is what all wholesalers care most deeply about: keeping their state’s market closed to genuine competition so that they don’t have to suffer the indignity of working hard to earn their margin.

There is any number of alcohol laws on the books in North Carolina and elsewhere that are regularly obeyed by the alcohol trade and by consumers. But for some reason, the ban on shipments from out-of-state retailers to North Carolina consumers isn’t taken quite as seriously by North Carolinians who don’t seem likely to stop ordering from out-of-state sellers.

Why? Because the law forbidding shipment to consumers was enacted without representing “public opinion or because the public opinion they did represent was not sufficiently preponderant in the community.”

Put another way, no one believes the anti-shipping law serves any legitimate purpose other than to protect wholesalers and lazy retailers from competition. Let’s face it…it’s not as though the buyers and sellers are going 50 in a 25.

The irony here is that the quote above comes from a book that was re-published by a wholesaler front group in an attempt to promote the notion that 1933 philosophies on alcohol regulation were every bit as relevant today as they were nearly 100 years ago. Clearly, in some cases they are.

If regulators and wholesalers really sought to understand the phenomenon of North Carolina consumers ordering alcohol from out-of-state and their willingness to engage in illegal activity they’d learn something very important: 1) North Carolina’s alcohol regulatory system and its wholesalers are incapable of serving basic consumer demands and 2) North Carolina consumers don’t respect the protectionist law banning alcohol shipments into the state.

The solution to the disconnect between the law and consumer attitudes toward the law is elegantly simple. All that is required is to rescind the ban on shipments from out-of-state retailers, take in the taxes retailers would happily pay on shipments, and be done with it. But why do that when you can issue a press release announcing some consumers won’t be getting the whisky and wine they ordered from someone who actually stocks it?