Washington State has government run liquor stores (hard liquor, beer and wine can be sold in grocery stores). Costco was behind an initiative this past November to privatize the liquor stores, and surprisingly enough it failed. I suspect that the various unions were backing their brothers and sisters employed by the Washington State Liquor Control Board.
While I am for the free market, I voted against the initiative; my reason?
As I told a guy gathering signatures on a petition last summer:
Washington State already has enough alcoholics, we don’t need any more.
Only buy your wine from the State... sounds familiar. Recall something about a country overseas putting rules on tea purchases....
how does the machine know whether the purchaser is old enough to buy the gunk?
PA has some of the craziest rules for buying alcohol. It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.
I used to live in Virginia and everybody would just hop in their cars and head to a liquor store in Washington, D.C. or Maryland.
Government has no business selling booze or restricting the sales of it. And I don’t even drink.
ti just hit me. if you can’t use your driver’s licenses to vote because it discriminates against the poor, wtf?
I hate state (or in my case provincial) controlled liquor agencies. Besides the hassle of having to go to a gov’t liquor store to buy beer, wine or liquor, at whatever hours they deign to operate, my biggest complaint is the lack of selection. In particular, I like some high-end beers from around the world, and I’m limited to whatever the LLBO (Liquor Licensing Board of Ontario) head office decides to bring in - no alternative whatsoever. On occasion they’ve brought in a seasonal offering that I really liked, only to find they had delisted it, after which I could never get it again. They’re a little more accomodating on wine, presumbably because the powerful and connected like their nice wines. What a crappy system.
Ping
(If FR gets back to life.)
Pity the Pennsylvanians who live far from Delaware ping
“The opposition to these proposals comes from labor unions representing state liquor store workers....”
State Liquor Store Workers?
This stuff is right out of a George Orwell novel.