Just when I think this liquor sale stuff cannot get any more mind-bendingly stupid, along comes Joe Wall.
The executive director and general counsel for the N.C. Association of ABC Boards, ie, could not possibly be more interested in defending the status quo system, uses a platform provided by the UPoR to insult the intelligence of all North Carolinians. Warning utter vituperative crap ahead:
Unlike private liquor store owners in other states, our city and county ABC store employees have no incentive to sell to underage persons or intoxicated individuals.
There is exactly zero evidence available to back up this outrageous libel. First, from a common-sense and factual standpoint, private liquor retailers in other states are subject to substantial legal sanctions for doing what Wall accuses them of doing, including fines and the loss of their liquor license. In fact, the situation is substantially similar to the sanctions liquor-by-the-drink sellers face in North Carolina — or does Wall think the state should take that business over too? The “incentives” to behave recklessly are exactly the same — there are none.
But more importantly studies of the actual impact of state regulation of liquor sales find absolutely no link between the degree to which a state controls liquor sales and negative societal impacts like underage drinking, DWIs, and the like. It is simply a myth that but for the fine, upstanding state employees at your local ABC store, liquor profiteers would be jumping out of the bushes to sell rum to 15-year-olds.
That Joe Wall thinks he can get away with a such a blatant misrepresentation of reality should be another nail in the coffin of a perverse and broken system.
