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?

Hearing is at 1:15
MD Senate Education Health and Environmental Affairs Committee
2 West, Miller Senate Building
11 Bladen St
Annapolis, MD 21401
Map

Full hearing schedule slate can be found on the MD legislature website.

If you’re into Facebook, you can join the cause.

Previous Vinotrip coverage here

Senator Jamie Raskin, coming out of District 20 (the Fightin’ Twentieth!) has introduced what looks to be the same bill that was shot down in 2008. SB-338 (here is last year’s: SB-616) went through the first reading in the Health and Environmental Affairs committee on Jan 29.

Short synopsis – Us Marylanders are trying to pick up the same privilege that Virginians and Washingtonians enjoy: that of having wine shipped to our door.

Publicly, the argument against the bill is hinged on control. People fear that underage kids will order liquor over the Internet and have it delivered to them. Opponents say that the bill does not provide the State of Maryland with enough power to discipline retailers who ship to minors. This, of course, is just just fear mongering and FUD. I don’t have stats on it but I haven’t heard any significant spike of cases in Virginia where minors were getting drunk off of wine purchased over the Internet. Further, both FedEx and UPS require adult signatures when delivering shipments of wine, so at some point some adult will have to take delivery, then pass the wine to the minors.

Privately, the liquor distributors contribute a lot of money toward having these sorts of bills stamped out. They control the pricing of liquor in this state, and they intend to keep it that way. There is no logical argument against this and the only response is to find out how your local legislator feels about it and vote accordingly.

Info page on the bill
Unofficial copy of the bill
Vinotrip coverage of last year’s HB-1260 and the Wine Shipping fiasco: the intro, the fight, the defeat, and the post-mortem from the opposition.