I ran into something the other day I have never seen before: watered down hard liquor. In Ohio, apparently, only State-controlled stores are allowed to sell hard liquor, so you have in the grocery stores 40 proof whiskey.
At the liquor store, I was told that the State tells them what they can stock, and how much to charge; and if I wanted to use a debit card, there was a $1 tax imposed for hard liquor, but not for beer or wine.
Being me, I got to thinking about the Constitutionality of this, and what my thoughts were about that extent of direct government interference in what should be a free market, but was no longer.
Liquor is one of those things that can plausibly be argued to exist in the moral domain. Alcohol has destroyed more lives and families than all the drugs ever invented combined. It’s not even close. People drink and drive and kill people. They beat their kids and wives. They lose their jobs. They get in fights. They kill themselves.
At the same time, it is my understanding that beer is the drink of choice of most alcoholics, and certainly one can get drunk easily enough on a sufficient quantity of ANYTHING that has alcohol, so making it harder to get hard liquor does not necessarily cut down on ANY of the undesirable behaviors.
Constitutionally, it would seem to me this should be acceptable. The Constitution does not protect liquor sales, although it would, I think, prevent States from banning liquor imports from other States. Actually, though, I know that some States ban the shipping of alcohol.
Unrelated, too, but relevant, is the fact that it would seem the Federal Government ought to ban the de facto prohibitions on competition in the insurance and other realms that some States impose. For example, in Alabama Blue Cross/Blue Shield–the local branch–has some 85% of the market. Why? Nobody else is allowed in there. I would suspect rates are as high as one normally sees in conditions of legally protected cartels.
I’m not going to take the time to work through all the ramifications of this, but thought I’d pass a few preliminary thoughts along.