As my colleague Karen Palasek discussed in the context of power companies supporting carbon taxes,
In the literal Baptists and bootleggers story, Baptists want a legal prohibition of alcoholic beverage sales for religious reasons. But moonshiners and bootleggers support the prohibition as well. Although Baptists oppose the sales on moral grounds, their policy benefits bootleggers, who join the prohibition bandwagon to protect their own territory?the illegal booze market.
Roy Cordato has also discussed the Baptists and Bootleggers aspect of supporting energy regulation.
Today, however, WRAL reports:
The Christian Action League of North Carolina is urging lawmakers to block any attempt to privatize the state-run liquor distribution system.
The conservative group, which a group of churches created during the prohibition era to address alcohol policy, said dismantling the state Alcoholic Beverage Control system would hurt North Carolina more than help it.
As far as privatizing the state’s byzantine liquor distribution system ? which incidentally is one of the items on JLF’s Agenda 2010 ? other states have seen, if anything, the opposite of the feared consumption problems from deregulation (click the graph for a larger version):
