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Saturday, October 17, 2009

Ind. Law - "Direct wine sale ban not about minors"

That is the headline to Dan and Krista Stockman's weekly "Uncorked" column today in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. Some quotes:

When you hear lawmakers, wholesalers and lobbyists talk about shipping wine directly to consumers, all they’ll want to talk about is how important it is to keep alcohol out of the hands of minors.

On that single point, they are correct: It is important to keep alcohol out of the hands of minors. It’s something we take seriously enough that people who are not yet 21 cannot even see the Uncorked page on Facebook, though, of course, there’s no way to score wine there.

But in the debate over direct shipment of wine, it is also the largest red herring you’ll ever see.

Last Sunday, The Journal Gazette reported on an Indiana Excise Police program that sent minors into retail establishments trying to buy alcohol. A shocking 35 percent were able to do so.

But the numbers are actually a lot worse than that.

The column breaks down the "35% sold to minors for all types of retail" by:The column continues:
Why does all this matter?

Because minors don’t buy alcohol online. Nowhere in America has any jurisdiction complained about a rash of minors getting alcohol through the Internet.

Why would they when it’s this easy to get it instantly – no credit card needed, no getting an adult to sign for delivery, no waiting for days or weeks for it to be delivered and no shipping charges?

And the really scary thing is that even the purchases the minors make are only a small fraction of the problem.

As we reported in this column a year ago, a four-year study by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration showed that most youth get their alcohol from their parents or other adults.

Seven out of 10 teens in the study got their alcohol for free; of the three in 10 who paid for it, two had someone buy for them and one bought it themselves, usually at a store. Meanwhile, none of the tens of thousands of teens surveyed in the study reported buying alcohol online. Zero.

So while the wholesalers and the lawmakers who work for them are jumping up and down about how direct shipping will put alcohol into minors’ hands, they’re ignoring not just the real problem, but a problem so large by comparison it’s beyond laughable.

The real issue is that the wholesalers have a legal monopoly and they want to keep it that way. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on lobbyists and campaign contributions, and it has gotten them the best lawmakers money can buy: The same people who say they’re pro-farm, pro-small business, pro-family business and pro-agri-tourism sold out the state’s wine industry to the liquor lobby in a move that would have closed every winery in the state but one.

In the “compromise” that followed, we got a Byzantine law that makes it all but impossible for a willing adult to call a winery and order products he could not otherwise buy here.

While they claim direct shipping would imperil the almighty three-tier system that has made them rich, that system has minors buying their product at a rate better than one in every three attempts, and in some cases at almost one in every two.

In the meantime, they run smokescreen debates like whether to allow sales on Sunday.

Until common sense prevails, we can only say “Cheers!” to the majority of retail outlets that refused to sell to minors. Keep up the good work.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on October 17, 2009 03:08 PM
Posted to Indiana Law