Smart Alec | A free market for booze

We believe in the free market here in the US of A.

Unless, of course, it relates to booze. Then, we believe in strict state socialism, governed by bureaucrats, quotas and artificially high prices set by a nanny state to control our wayward behavior. I refer, of course, to the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board.

Set up after the repeal of Prohibition to “discourage the purchase of alcoholic beverages by making it as inconvenient and expensive as possible,” in the words of then-Governor Gifford Pinchot, the PLCB operates the only state alcohol monopoly in the Union (other than Utah). That monopoly should end. State Rep. Mike Turzai’s thoroughly sensible bill to privatize the liquor business in Pennsylvania is as good a way as any to do it.

What’s wrong with the monopoly? Easy: just ask any Pennsylvanian who has gone across the border to New Jersey or Delaware for alcohol. In Pennsylvania prices are too high, range is abysmal and all alcohol must be purchased in specialized stores with each item cleared by a government board (because the government has much better taste in wine than you do). So we do what multiple elections couldn’t do and vote with our feet. Neighboring states are the richer for it.

But this is America — our first question should be why the government should run a $2 billion sector of the economy. The onus is on the government to justify its extraordinary intervention.

Here the PLCB performs poorly. Let’s set aside its claim that it generates more revenue than a private alternative. Turzai’s privatization bill promises even more revenues through judicious sales taxes and increased economic activity. The main reason advanced for the monopoly — at least by Joe Conti, the PLCB’s chief executive officer — is safety. In a recent New York Times article, Conti argued that state stores have less incentive to sell to the underaged and tipsy because stores “aren’t incentivized to sell.”

If that’s the case, then why is it that Pennsylvania’s alcohol abuse statistics are in line with those of our neighbors? In New York, 24.7 percent of dangerous drinkers were reported to be between the ages 18 and 25. In Pennsylvania, that figure is 24.1 percent. Both of these states have big college populations. Where’s the PLCB advantage?

Consider Penn, the only Ivy League school in an alcohol-socialistic state, and again it appears that the monopoly has only an ancillary effect on alcohol consumption — our dangerous drinking statistics are on par with those of our peers. The simple reason for all of this is that college social organizations, from fraternities to theater groups to the chess team, simply get their of-age members to buy alcohol for their underage members. No state monopoly will ever change that.

Moreover, for young of-age students the PLCB monopoly discourages exactly the behavior we want to encourage — buying small amounts of wine and spirits for a particular occasion. High costs and bad service drive us (quite literally) out of the state where the inconvenience of travel encourages bulk purchases of booze. And, of course, this dangerous over-purchasing of alcohol doesn’t even go into the Pennsylvania state coffers meant to pay for alcohol education.

Turzai’s bill will create thriving competition in the Pennsylvania liquor business while simultaneously preserving the PLCB’s enforcement authority. The PLCB will be empowered to investigate any outlet that sells illegally and fine it to smithereens. It will almost certainly have little to no effect on dangerous drinking in Pennsylvania — and may possibly reduce it by instilling the right drinking culture, the only solution to dangerous drinking that works.

Most importantly, much like Congress’s repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” it will consign to the 1920s a policy that emphatically belongs there and breathe new life into a great American virtue — free-market capitalism.

Alec Webly is a College senior from Melbourne, Australia. He is the former chairman of the Undergraduate Assembly. His e-mail address is webley@theDP.com. Smart Alec appears on Thursdays.

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