A big omnibus bill all about booze really ought to be more fun. But House Bill 909, which would change eight separate areas of the state’s complex and arcane alcohol laws, is mostly a bore.
The bill, which passed the House in April and was cleared by one Senate committee and moved to another last week, doesn’t have much worth arguing over.
Few seem to oppose its ban on powdered alcohol, for instance. And, once you realize that’s a real product and not a bizarre sketch comedy premise, it’s not hard to see why.
And who among our representatives wants to be the killjoy arguing distillers can’t sell growler jugs of hard cider just as brewers sell beer?
But don’t let the smooth taste fool you. There is one provision that’s given some powerful interests a bit of a hangover.
The bill would allow distilleries to sell you a bottle of their spirits when you take a tour of their facilities.
Fairly simple — and it would be a boon to businesses like the Greensboro Distillery Co., which hopes to produce craft rye whiskey in the next two years and bourbon in the next four.
But, while you can buy wine from a winery and beer from a brewery, under current state law you can only buy spirits — gin, whiskey, vodka, etc. — from an Alcoholic Beverage Commission store, regulated by local government boards.
The North Carolina Association of ABC Boards would like to keep it that way. It argues local governments would miss their cut of local liquor sales taxes if distilleries could sell bottles to the public.
State Sen. Rick Gunn (R-Alamance) says the bill is meant to allow the sale of just one bottle of liquor per person per year from any one distillery. But a lobbyist for the ABC Boards says even that is too slippery a slope.
The same contention was made by the Rev. Mark Creech, director of the North Carolina Christian Action League.
As reported by Mark Binker of WRAL, Creech said excusing distilleries could lead to the loosening of liquor sales laws in other places.
“You cannot give a right and a privilege to one group and then withhold it from another,” Creech said. “It’s like a chip in the windshield for your car. The crack will just spread.”
Sure, Reverend. But in this case the windshield is an illogical, outmoded, needlessly restrictive system of alcohol sales. And that crack? We call that freedom.
Here’s hoping our General Assembly, whose Republican majority reveres our nation’s Founding Fathers, remembers that George Washington was one of the nation’s largest commercial distillers.
The father of our country didn’t own up to chopping down that cherry tree, eat all his meals with wooden teeth and throw off the yoke of tyranny by winning the Revolutionary War so that our government could prevent distillers from selling one bottle of the hard stuff per person per year.
This bill makes sense. Pass it, senators, and we’ll raise a glass to you.
