Would you advocate for federal wine shipping?
Numerous sources are reporting, as part of a plan to help the United States Postal Service start earning money instead of hemorrhaging it, an initiative to let the Postal Service ship alcohol, as opposed to just letting FedEx and UPS do it. (Note: only licensed industry folks can ship alcohol through FedEx and UPS; as a private citizen, I couldn’t bubble wrap my favorite Maryland vintage and ship it to a friend out of state.) Right now, you can’t even go green and re-use a box with alcohol logos to ship items, unless you cover up all the alcohol logos.
You can read the entire bill and its amendments here on Congress’ official site. (all documents are PDFs). The amendments don’t address alcohol shipments, but they’re interesting to see from a procedural point of view. S.1789 seems to set up USPS alcohol shipments much the same way Maryland now regulates shipments: deliveries must be initiated by a licensed industry entity who work out a contract with the Post Office, and individuals taking deliveries must present photo identification.
Open Congress confirms that the bill has only been introduced; beyond proposed amendments listed on the website above, no legislative action has been taken.
What would happen if we were able to get as strong a voice behind S.1789 as we had behind Maryland’s shipping law? (In fact, if you go to Open Congress’ site above, you can send your legislator a letter for or against the bill.) While Congress is notorious for not getting anything practical done, distributors themselves would be able to ship through USPS, and increasing state approval of wine shipping sets precedents (Massachusetts and New Jersey are considering legislation similar to Maryland’s in 2012). So I’m not sure S.1789 would face the same obstacles that our Maryland law faced.
Where do you stand on this bill?
