Brown: Bring the beer aisle to Pennsylvania

Getting a case of beer is never as easy as walking down the street — it involves much more… Getting a case of beer is never as easy as walking down the street — it involves much more strategy. If finding the few distributors’ locations isn’t confusing enough, it seems like many of them are never open when you want them to be, either.

During Snowpocalypse, I marched through the heaps of snow to the only distributor within two miles to find out it was closed. The only option was to go to a bar and overpay for a six-pack instead. I wasn’t about to do that.

But I don’t think I’m the only person to have ever experienced such a dilemma. Judging from a new piece of legislation, our lawmakers might feel the same way.

State Sen. John Rafferty recently introduced legislation that would allow convenience stores and grocers the opportunity to sell beer. If passed, it would replace beer distribution laws that date back to the end of Prohibition in 1933.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, some politicians are concerned about backlash from Mothers Against Drunk Driving. But as a native Ohioan who has lived with laws similar to those proposed, I feel safe in saying that opening more locations for beer sales wouldn’t create a widespread moral decay or damage the population’s wellbeing.

Beer distributors have expressed their disapproval with the legislation, though. As grocery stores and gas stations abound, distributors believe the competition could hamper business.

David Shipula, the president of the Malt Beverage Distributors Association of Pennsylvania, wants to maintain the current law. He suggested that the Wal-Mart stores of the world would put some of the 450 distributors he represents out of business.

Changing the law might surely close some distributors, unless they make their business practices more relevant in the marketplace. But I wouldn’t go blaming the ghost of Sam Walton for anything just yet.

Competition is what drives the U.S. economy. Promoting it is the only power consumers have in the marketplace, forcing businesses to put an emphasis on meeting customer needs and providing value.

While scanning the beer aisle at an Ohio Wal-Mart at midnight over winter break, I was taken aback by how much cheaper the prices were compared to distributors’ here.

Shipula also said he thinks that including larger stores within the guidelines would result in more underage beer purchases. However, under Rafferty’s proposal, the law would mandate that people of all ages be carded.

The law would be no less enforceable at a Giant Eagle than it would be at the corner beer distributor. If anything, it would be more stringent.

Steve Sheetz, the chief executive of Sheetz, Inc. and a vocal proponent of the bill, also said that the law needed changing.

“Our beer laws are backward. They’re counterintuitive, they’re inefficient and they’re hypocritical,” he said at a rally for the bill.

Indeed, the beer laws are. But the root of the problem lies in how Pennsylvania handles alcohol sales in general.

For 77 years, the state and its distributors have kept a stranglehold on the market. The state didn’t even allow Sunday beer sales until 2005. The distributors are holding on as hard as they can to keep their profitable product exclusive.

In Ohio, we have independent non-grocer distributors that thrive despite fierce beer-market competition from grocers because distributors exclusively sell liquors greater than 42 proof. Many are also licensed to sell tobacco products, too.

Here, distributors are sandwiched so that they can’t sell anything but beer in cases or kegs. Hopefully if this law passes, packaging restrictions would open up for distributors so they could sell six- and 12-packs, too.

But I’m not holding my breath, even with a Republican-controlled State Senate that should be in support of the bill. The strong-lobbying distributors association has fought Sheetz in the state Supreme Court over the convenience store’s distribution of six-packs, and the association won. Now, it’s going after Wegmans grocery stores.

With politicians wanting to advance capitalism and businesspeople wanting to hold it back, it makes for an odd juxtaposition. But that could be because the politicians are trying to do what’s right for once.

Strapped with a state budget that is currently off $525 million from its yearly budget projections and with the 2011 budget to be propped up by $2.76 billion in stimulus funding, it’s evident that the state cash flow is drying up.

So instead of waiting for the worst, the state is trying to open up new sources where it can allow beer sales to drive in more tax revenue, as well as amend laws that were designed by fear-mongering politicians 77 years ago. So to Rafferty and the Senate, I lift my mug to you.

E-mail Jacob at jeb110@pitt.edu.