Liquor laws

Boutique wineries have been selling their small-volume product direct to consumers by mail for decades. But access was limited by varying state laws.

Then, in 2005, wine makers who had long complained about the difficulties of navigating that confusing and contradictory rat's nest of state-by-state regulations won a major victory when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that if a state allows direct shipment of wine inside its borders, it must also allow direct shipment to customers outside state borders. The number of states allowing such direct shipment has now reached 38.

Do major wholesalers like this? They do not. Although the volume of such shipments is still small, it's growing, and this apparently threatens the lucrative monopolies that regulators in many states have granted to a select number of distributors.

So a new bill, favored by many Democrats inherently suspicious of free trade, now surfaces. H.R. 5034 would exempt alcohol from that 2005 ruling. Backers say the measure would reduce chances that underage consumers might buy alcohol over the Internet. Sponsors say they also aim to end a string of lawsuits which they believe are chewing away at alcohol regulation, in general.

Attorneys general in 40 states -- including Nevada's Catherine Cortez Masto -- support the re-regulation, the Reno Gazette-Journal reports. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., is among the bill's more than 100 co-sponsors in the House.

Consumers who actually order cases of wine by mail scoff at the notion that teens in search of a surreptitious nip have forgotten how to slip some homeless guy a few bucks to snag them a bottle of Boone's Farm, and are instead now waiting weeks to get on the mailing lists of elite wineries whose products bring $60 a bottle.

Northern Nevada mail-order wine buyer Paul Franklin told the Gazette-Journal that if wineries again have to jump through a separate set of hoops to ship to each state, they'll likely concentrate on shipping only to larger states.

The states should have more autonomy in many areas. But Congress was given its much-abused power to regulate interstate commerce precisely to prevent the states from erecting thickets of regulations that can make it virtually impossible to move otherwise legal products across state lines.

If kids lie to buy products illegally, then prosecute them. But if Congress wants to create private-sector jobs to dig us out of this recession, they should set a goal of repealing 10 job-killing federal laws or regulations each month -- while sending H.R. 5034 to the same museum where they keep Carrie Nation's ax, before it becomes one more addition to that list.