Fear mongering in politics.
Yeah, that's nothing new. But I got a political ad in the mail today that just impressed me with how equally novel and shameless it was.
Particularly for my friends in California who can buy spirits in the grocery store, here's a quick overview of how liquor sales work in Washington State: Manufacturers of spirits have to sell their products to distributors. These distributors then turn around and sell these products to retail liquor stores run by the Washington Liquor Control Board. These stores, and only these stores, then sell at retail to the public. There's a similar process for the sale of spirits to bars and restaurants that serve alcoholic drinks.
Initiative I-1183 is before the voters this year, and would put an end to this system. It would get the state out of the business of selling liquor, and remove the necessity of having these distributors as middle-men in the transactions. It basically turns liquor sales into a more open and free market situation.
Two similar measures were on the ballot last year: one that kept the distributors as middle-men but allowed private sellers, and another that took them out of the loop. Both measures failed by fairly narrow margins.
This year, just the no-distributor version is back, and opponents started out by presenting a lot of the same arguments that are pretty much right out of the temperance movement: private sellers have poorer ID checking enforcement than state liquor stores and will allow teenagers easier access to liquor; it'll increase alcohol consumption and therefore alcohol-related injuries, deaths and violence; and so on and so forth. I kinda wish I'd kept one of the previous mailers I got, with the four perfectly photogenic white kids and the big print, "One of these teenagers will be able to buy liquor if I-1183 passes."
But now the opponents of I-1183 have taken a different approach. They trumpet loudly that Costco is big money behind I-1183, as Costco would clearly love to be able to sell at discount to the public and completely cut out the distributors. So you can imagine where a bunch of the funding for the I-1183 opposition comes from.
This showed up today:
I might even conclude they're taking a cue from the rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement, especially since they throw Wall Street up as one of their bogeymen. I'm not endorsing either position in this, but if you know me, you can probably figure out where I line up on this issue. The scare tactic is what makes this noteworthy. At least the "one in four teenagers could successfully buy liquor" argument has some research behind it. This is manufactured out of whole cloth.
Particularly for my friends in California who can buy spirits in the grocery store, here's a quick overview of how liquor sales work in Washington State: Manufacturers of spirits have to sell their products to distributors. These distributors then turn around and sell these products to retail liquor stores run by the Washington Liquor Control Board. These stores, and only these stores, then sell at retail to the public. There's a similar process for the sale of spirits to bars and restaurants that serve alcoholic drinks.
Initiative I-1183 is before the voters this year, and would put an end to this system. It would get the state out of the business of selling liquor, and remove the necessity of having these distributors as middle-men in the transactions. It basically turns liquor sales into a more open and free market situation.
Two similar measures were on the ballot last year: one that kept the distributors as middle-men but allowed private sellers, and another that took them out of the loop. Both measures failed by fairly narrow margins.
This year, just the no-distributor version is back, and opponents started out by presenting a lot of the same arguments that are pretty much right out of the temperance movement: private sellers have poorer ID checking enforcement than state liquor stores and will allow teenagers easier access to liquor; it'll increase alcohol consumption and therefore alcohol-related injuries, deaths and violence; and so on and so forth. I kinda wish I'd kept one of the previous mailers I got, with the four perfectly photogenic white kids and the big print, "One of these teenagers will be able to buy liquor if I-1183 passes."
But now the opponents of I-1183 have taken a different approach. They trumpet loudly that Costco is big money behind I-1183, as Costco would clearly love to be able to sell at discount to the public and completely cut out the distributors. So you can imagine where a bunch of the funding for the I-1183 opposition comes from.
This showed up today:
I might even conclude they're taking a cue from the rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement, especially since they throw Wall Street up as one of their bogeymen. I'm not endorsing either position in this, but if you know me, you can probably figure out where I line up on this issue. The scare tactic is what makes this noteworthy. At least the "one in four teenagers could successfully buy liquor" argument has some research behind it. This is manufactured out of whole cloth.