Washington Uses Liquor Freedom Law To Make Liquor Less Free

When Washington state voters passed Initiative 1183, they intended to end the state's lingering, Prohibition-era "experiment in alcoholic socialism."

Instead, writes author and moonshine expert Matthew Rowley on his Whiskey Forge blog, the Washington Liquor Board has seized on the opportunity to raise liquor taxes and issue new rules interpreting the initiative as preventing local distillers from selling to restaurants or bars until March 1, 2012:

[R]ecent interpretation by the Washington Liquor Control Board has left some distillers wondering, rightly, whether their businesses will survive…

[Distiller Orlin] Sorensen has urged his fellow distillers in the Washington Distillers Guild that they "need to remind the liquor control board that the voter's intent of 1183 was to privatize liquor, not raise taxes and fees on craft distillers and handcuff them from doing business in the state."

More details on the Liquor Board's tactics are available from reporter Josh Kerns' story over at MyNorthwest.com. And watch below to see Rowley talk about why it's time to finally "Free the 'Shine" and really end Prohibition. 

Comments

[Episiarch]

I would imagine this is just the liquor store employees' union scum and liquor wholesalers getting the board to cause pain while they try and use a lawsuit to keep their jobs and the liquor monopoly.

Those fucking parasites held nothing back in the leadup to the vote that (potentially) killed their ridiculous stranglehold, and they are holding nothing back in trying to get that initiative overturned.

[Fist of Etiquette]

"In a free and open society, we don't need a reason to make things legal. What we need are reasons to make things illegal."

Well, the reason moonshining is illegal is because I don't like it and because legislators and their bureaucratic masters fear anything they don't control.

And the new General Lee is a Mustang?

[Episiarch]

And the new General Lee is a Mustang?

What nonsense are you spewing, Commander Kruge?

[Fist of Etiquette]

The car they keep showing in the video with the moonshiner, in lieu of his face. Uncle Jesse apparently drives a Mustang.

(And I know your first thoughts go to Full House, but not that Uncle Jesse.)

[Episiarch]

My thoughts always go first to John Stamos. Whose don't?

[Fist of Etiquette]

Mystique's don't. Not anymore.

[Episiarch]

Well, now's your chance then!

[EDG reppin' LBC]

Referring to the 'Stanger in the background of the video. Silver with black rally stripes. But I say fuck that Ford shit! Mopar!

[T]

Public employees, when thwarted, always try to pass the pain along to someone. Why is anyone surprised?

[Nelson]

Ha ha!

[Oops]

Episiarch|11.9.11 @ 11:09AM
FUCK YEAH

Finally. You should have seen the "and all the children will die!!!" commercials the distribution and union fucks were running; so absurd it was painful. Oh, fuck you so much, liquor store workers and distribution protectionists; fuck you so much. This is great.

[Warty]

HI MISS RECTAL I FOUND U THIS HERE MOUSE TAIL IN THE STILL

[John Thacker]

Yes, it appears for once Episiarch actually underestimated the evil of the government and its workers.

[Joshua Corning]

About 40 craft distillers have popped up around the state since Washington created a new license allowing them in 2008.

Washington state sometimes amazes me...it is one of the shittiest states in the universe to start a business in yet sometimes it pulls a rabbit out of its asshole and does something like legalize micro-distilling.

new rules interpreting the initiative as preventing local distillers from selling to restaurants or bars until March 1, 2012:

One thing that should be noted is that i think all spirits have to bought through the state run stores by restaurants and bars....and that is the way it has always been done...to expect it to change before the new law takes effect is kind of a bullshit whine....but yeah that tax thing is pretty cruddy.

[BB]

In other news, the attempt to bring the Pennsylvania liquor regime to some semblance of sanity is suffering death by evisceration.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg.....70-100.stm

[BB]

In other news, the attempt to get rid of the moronic Liquor Control Board and privatize alcohol sales is being subjected to death by evisceration. In a starring role, there's even a Republican refusing to let 3800 unionized cashiers (for they know not a thing about wine) find other jobs in the would-be-privatized booze sector.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg.....70-100.stm