The Battle of the Bottle, Ad Infinitum

This post started with what I thought would be a short comment on a recent Patch story about the Centers for Disease Control linking the privatization of liquor sales with the increased potential for abuse, and its associated negative societal impacts.

The story, re-posted from the always informative Pennsylvania Independent website,  includes several links with a lot of interesting information about an issue that the average person probably knows a lot about, without having to read a lot about it. There's a certain sadness to that factual obviousness.

For me the truth is that you're not going to see a perfect statistical prohibition or reduction of the negative effects of alcohol abuse, primarily because of the one real factor that statistics have a hard time with - human nature.

I'll go to Colorado as an example again. Liquor sales there are privatized, and there is "healthy" competition between liquor outlets both large and small. To be sure, there is rigorous state and local licensing and enforcement activity going on, as it should. Undercover purchasing enforcement is conducted fairly frequently, and violations against buyer and seller alike are reported - publicly.

While the impact on society is as debatable as the stats being debated in the story, it's clear that the economy is benefiting in more creative ways there than it is in Pennsylvania.

For example, media outlets benefit from aggressive and voluminous advertising purchased by liquor outlets, their sale prices prominently displayed. The full-page ads in the Denver Post for places like Applejack and Argonaut Liquor are legendary in both scope and frequency.

Is it any wonder, perhaps, that privatization of Pennsylvania's liquor industry is something that the editorial boards of the Post-Gazette and the Trib seem to have embraced with seemingly equal fervor, perhaps arrived at with a celebratory toast (at an undisclosed location) in anticipation of the advertising revenue that they might also reap?

This all pales in comparison, however, to the sense of surprise I feel whenever I go into a Wal-Mart in Missouri, and see the booze aisle just sitting there between the pop and the cereal. Wheaties and Jim Beam - the breakfast of champions?

This is a sign of something much more disturbing to me - the pervasive nature of alcohol marketing, and the insidious effects of alcohol on our overall quality of life. It seems that the message is being sent and received that alcohol is essential to appreciating the so-called finer moments of life; that the entertainment experience (and expenditures) are incomplete without it.

Leslie and I felt this when we attended a Pirates game at PNC Park recently - taking note of how many beer vendors there were, how much beer was being purchased, how many people were moving around with beer in hand, how much of a beer smell there was around us.

We all know this but don't talk too much about it, probably because we all know and/or love someone who has what we perceive as issues with alcohol, or we see this in our own lives and, like so many other things, are in denial about it. This is something that transcends the social, cultural, and economic boundaries that we as a society spend so much of our mental, temporal, and financial resources to construct and maintain.

I'm not any kind of a drinker - I don't think I've seen the inside of a State Store since we priced champagne for our wedding. BTW, the price for the same brand here was $4 per bottle more than in Colorado - perhaps another argument for privatization.  

There is increasing noise being made by Pennsylvanians, especially ones who have seen how things run elsewhere in this country, about the archaic, inefficient nature of many government operations. The manner in which alcohol sales are regulated here is but one example, and won't be resolved to anyone's complete satisfaction anytime soon. 

From the Whiskey Rebellion through Prohibition to the present day, one constant in our nation's history is that if someone wants a drink, they are most likely going to find one. The same goes for other vices whose supposed impact on the fabric of our society, and efforts by government to apply a measure of control and/or generate a revenue stream from them, are being debated..vigorously. This apparently runs the gamut from video gambling to marijuana to...Big Gulps?

Perhaps it's time for a lot of states, including Pennsylvania, to emerge from what feels like the dark ages and start re-inventing governance from the ground up.

With that, choose your poisons carefully, and have a good weekend.

The opinions expressed in this weblog are solely my own as an individual and private citizen, and do not represent the opinion or policy of my family, my employer, or any other private or public entity.

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