WAIT! you mean a person won't have to drive(after having one or two drinks) across town to a state run liquor store if the Sunday BBQ runs out of gin? i could just run across the street and pick up a bottle at the local store! WOW sensible and environmentally sensitive!! go 1100

all of these yes no yes no yes no posts are starting to confuse me

What's this crap about "currently selling beer and wine"? I want NEW liquor stores, not just grocery stores. My wine shop is too small to carry much if any liquor.

I want an initiative that includes language requiring online inventory database like this: http://liq.wa.gov/HomepageServices/brand…

Also I live w/in walking distance of 2 liquor stores, so I don't understand this lack of store locations you talk about.

I do want more Caribbean rum though. They've got like millions, we've got like 2.

Yes, by all means vote for I-1100 if:

* You LOVE Wal Mart and think they deserve more money at the expense of fire protection, emergency services, law enforcement and education.
* You HATE our local microbrew industry and would prefer that Budcoorsmiller be the beer of choice on every grocery store in the state.
* You LOVE big-chain restaurants and think that their power to clinch volume discounts from liquor distributors should be fully brought to bear on the local restaurants and bars of the state.
* You HATE that kids are limited to drinking beer and wine because that's all they can really access in grocery and convenience stores.
* You LOVE bullet-proof glass and steel bars on the windows of your local "package stores" and really enjoy reading the police blotter to find out how many liquor stores were robbed over the weekend.

Folks, this is not an either/or situation. If we want these liquor laws changed, we can do it without voting for initiatives written by Costco, Wal Mart and Big Beer. We have enough government by big business already, thank you very much. I'll keep my quaint little state liquor stores and their estimated $300 million dollars in annual revenue until we get a reasonable bill through the legislature that doesn't screw everyone except the biggest corporate bullies on the block.

And the convenience argument? If you're having trouble finding a liquor store, go here:

http://www.liq.wa.gov/homepageServices/s…

In fact, why don't you take a good look at the entire site and ask yourself, "If sales are privatized, can I expect this kind of one-stop shop for information on my liquor?" I'll give you a hint: NO!

No on i-1100/i-1105

@5 - Budcoorsmiller is who's paying for the opposition, i.e., your position.

None of your other points are supported by reason, or examples of outcomes in other non-control states, besides the idea that large stores that can buy in bulk stand to make money. So? The state tax on liquor will remain.

Side note: New York will always have "bodegas", Detroit will always have "party stores", and Seattle will always have "corner stores." I don't expect the term "liquor store" will be ever become Washingtonian's preferred nomenclature for a small grocery or convenience store that sells booze.

If either initiative passes, the state loses money from liquor sales. We don't need to fuck up the state budget just to buy us a drank more easily.

Initiatives written by a single industry inevitably end up benefitting that industry at the expense of the public. I'm voting NO on both.

@6 The Beer Institute is funding the opposition. It is an industry group representing the entire Beer Industry, and yes, it is largely funded by the big guys, but it also represents Beer as a whole (though the WA Brewers Guild is looking out for our little guys far more than the BI.). The big brewers are against 1100 because of the macro-economic fight of Big Beer vs. Big Liquor, but Big Beer stands to gain either way.

If 1100 passes, Bud and the big guys stand to gain because it guts 39 laws which currently prevent them from using their monopoly position to abuse the market and push out small producers like our local microbrewers. There is only so much shelf-space or taps to go around and current laws prevent large brewers and wineries from simply paying stores to monopolize the entire aisle. This would go bye-bye, along with the space that small breweries need in order to grow and prosper. This is why local brewers are against it and yet can still credibly make the claim that though the BI supports the No campaign, and they are glad for the financing, those same Big Brewers will move in if 1100 passes and push out the small guys. Bud wins either way!

It's not just that if 1100 passes Bud could now use its multi-million dollar advertising budget to directly buy up space in stores and bars that would otherwise be taken by craft brewers, it's also that many liquor distributors also distribute large national wine and beer brands. So bars will get a friendly call from their fancy new billion dollar nationwide monopoly distributors (I'm looking at you Odom Corp (aka Southern Wine and Spirits): "Hey, we see you're selling a lot of Jack Daniels. That's great, and thanks for the business. But you see, as your sole licensed regional distributor, we'd love it if you put a tap of our Bud/Mil/Coors where that local tap was. Oh, and your house wine will now be Gallo. That is, unless you'd prefer to no longer sell Jack."

THIS SHIT HAPPENS.

And the "oh but someone else will sell them Jack" argument is bullshit. Thanks to the unique place give to alcohol by the 21st Amendment, it is very, very hard to press an anti-trust suit against a liquor distributor. So they divvy the brands up and you get one supplier who you are absolutely beholden to. Enjoy the strings attached.

NO on both!

I have nothing to add beyond saying that I think it would be an awesome pick-up line to say that you work for The Beer Institute.

These measures are way too extreme. If you favor privatization this just not the way to do it. Both measures result in millions of lost revenue to state and local law enforcement, health, education and prevention programs. Both would make hard liquor more available at more locations. Law enforcement could not possibly get better with the loss of funds and more outlets to police.

It's not helpful to conclude something by comparing "control" states and "license" states in two big lumps. Some license states have much tighter control over alcohol than control states. For example, Minnesota and Kansas only allow 3.2% beer to be sold in a grocery store. All other alcohol has to be sold in liquor stores which are privately operated.

Hard liquor is a more powerful and potentially dangerous product which is why most states control it more carefully--even license states. While people certainly drive drunk, get addicted, and acquire health problems with beer and wine...things would likely be worse if hard liquor was the drink of choice. Greater availability of hard liquor will be attractive to youth who drink primarily to get drunk. Its easier and faster to get buzzed on hard liquor.

To some degree the choice is whether to be careful or careless with alcohol. I'd vote for careful and vote no on both these measures.

Fnarf @3: Stores currently licensed to sell beer and wine will be able to upgrade their licenses to sell spirits upon payment of the fee, provided that they're in good standing with the liquor board. New stores will be able get licensed too. They'll go through the same license application process that any new applicant for a beer/wine grocery store goes through today. That includes criminal background check, community input period and other review.

Citizen R@8: The initiative was NOT written by a single industry. Brendan Williams is essentially correct about the authorship. I was the primary, though not the sole author. Whatever you might think of my views on unrelated issues, the liquor issue has less to do with partisan politics than any other issue that I've seen. Most of the businesses which are most actively supporting I-1100 are owned and/or led by liberal Democrats. Costco's executives donate generously and almost exclusively to Democratic candidates and liberal causes. Same can be said about most of the people in the restaurant and nightlife businesses who are behind this. The NO campaign might have been started by UFCW, but its biggest funders are the mostly Republican beer companies and a few religious conservatives who seem nostalgic for Prohibition.

The drafters wrote it entirely from our own pro-consumer perspective and without any industry behind us when we started. The initiative was designed to provide a fair marketplace to benefit consumers and the businesses that do the best job of serving us. My pro-consumer philosophy, in a nutshell: Consumers deserve to be sovereign in the marketplace and to have freedom to choose where they shop and who they buy from. Businesses should have to compete to win our business. The government's role in the consumer marketplace should be limited to enforcing product safety laws, other laws that protect people from physical harm and regulations to prevent predatory pricing and monopolies. Other than that it's not in the public's interest for government to subsidize one business at the expense of others, or to "protect" some businesses by outlawing fair competition or mutually beneficial business deals that are freely entered into.

I-1100 would create a fair marketplace based on those principles.

The businesses that support it are mostly retailers (from the very small to the very large), bars and restaurants, and a lot of small wineries. These businesses believe that the free and fair consumer-driven marketplace will allow them be more successful.

The businesses that hate I-1100 most and are spending millions to defeat it are the big multinational breweries (e.g. Anheuser-Busch/Inbev, now based in Belgium) and beer distributors from around the country. Breweries and beer distributors benefit now by having the state liquor stores keeping many alcoholic beverages out of grocery stores, and thereby protecting beer from competition for shelf space and customer choice. Also, the beer and wine industries are regulated with antiquated laws, which have nothing to do with public safety and don't exist for any other consumer product. Some of these businesses feel these "protect" them from competition with their rivals. But the main effect is to reduce consumer choice and raise consumer prices.

Brendan @11: I-1100 maintains the $220+ million annual revenue from the statutory liquor sales tax. The revenue that would be discontinued is the liquor store "markup" which is in essence an extra sales tax imposed by the liquor board instead of the Legislature. The extra sales tax brings in less than $60 million in a normal year. Much of that will be made up anyway by B&O taxes. I think that it's the Legislature's job to set taxes. If we want the sales tax which is today imposed by the liquor board to continue, then it deserves to continue as a transparent and properly legislated liquor sales tax. I have no doubt that someone in the next session of the Legislature will introduce such a bill to increase the liquor sales tax so that the total effective tax on liquor is maintained, and you can encourage the members to support it.

But the issue of taxation is completely separate from the question whether or not it's a core function of government to sell Kahlua and Triple Sec