Emperor’s New Clothes, Tilting at Windmills, and Studies on Direct Wine Shipping
Creative Commons licensed image from Flickr user Storm Crypt
The Maryland Comptroller is hard at work holding hearings and meetings studying the effect that direct wine shipping will have on the shippers and retailers of Maryland. One of their goals is to draft a paper on issues surrounding direct wine shipping. A noble cause, indeed, and one that the Federal Trade Comission accomplished on with their 2003 paper: Possible Anticompetitive Barriers to E-Commerce: Wine (download at your pleasure here (pdf)). The paper has its highlights, including a state-by-state analysis of wine shipping. My favorite highlight is the following testimony from Chief Deputy Director of the California Alcoholic Beverage Control Manny Espinoza.
CALIFORNIA ASSEMBLYWOMAN [KERRY] MAZZONI: I understand from your comments, you do not believe that the underage market is a problem?
MR. ESPINOZA: I haven’t seen it, and I base that experience on two things. One, we had [direct wine shipping] for the last 20 years, and we never had an incident where there was complaint about a minor receiving [wine].
THAT SOUND YOU HEAR IS THE THUNDERING VOICE OF REASON.
Maryland’s government is notorious for ignoring – even going out of their way to contradict – that which others states do. This, clearly, is no exception.
Look, I applaud the work that the Comptroller is doing even if it is just busy-work so that the liquor lobby has more time to tee-up some more phantom arguments or contribute to more campaigns. But we can report all we want. The opposition is made up of smoke and mirrors and addressing their public concerns (economy, minors accessing alcohol) allows them to make a mockery of us with thier actual concerns (money, money, money).
