Don’t listen to the Stranger Election Control Board on I-1100… they’re all a bunch of drunks.
Honestly… have you ever been to the Stranger’s offices? The hallways stink of urine and cheap whiskey, the floors are perpetually sticky with I-don’t-wanna-know-what, and far from being the hipster hangout I imagined it to be, the whole ambience comes off as sorta like a cross between a homeless shelter and a gay, geeky, college frat house.
I mean, this is a “newspaper” that considers a single viewing of “His Girl Friday” to be the educational equivalent of a J-school degree, so the only journalism credential most of its reporters have is a cliched bottle of bourbon in their desk drawer. That is, assuming they even have a desk: Cienna squats over a laptop all day on the dirt floor of a kinda yurt-like structure she built entirely out of empty wine boxes.
So really, don’t take seriously any of the arguments in the SECB’s Yes endorsement on I-1100; they were all totally hammered when they wrote it. (Except, of course, for Dan; he just drifts around all day utterly and irreversibly high.) Which perhaps explains why the Stranger is so desperate to dramatically expand the availability of hard liquor, their offices being more than what, a half-block away from the nearest State Store. The DTs can be a bitch.
The fact is, the SECB’s whole pro-1100 argument is based almost entirely on convenience: that the limited number and hours of State Stores just makes it too difficult to purchase a bottle of rotgut when, you know, they really, really need it. But is that reason enough for taxpayers to hand over tens of millions of dollars of revenue a year to corporate giants like Costco and Safeway and 7-11 in exchange for not only increasing convenience, but also increasing both the prevalence and cost of alcohol abuse?
See, not all alcoholics are as harmless and lovable as the car-less barflies at the Stranger, whose most abusive booze-fueled behavior is mostly targeted at the English language. Alcohol is the most widely abused drug available. It is the most devastating to families, and the most costly to businesses and government. And it is also by far the most deadly.
Yes, most people can be trusted to enjoy alcohol responsibly, but in terms of lost productivity, lost families and lost lives, alcohol abuse carries with it huge social and economic costs. And if you dramatically increase the availability while dramatically lowering the price—as I-1100 promises—you will inevitably increase both consumption and abuse.
That means more alcohol-related health costs, more domestic violence, more crime and more drunk driving fatalities. That’s what’s happened in other states that liberalized their liquor laws, and that’s what will happen here.
And it also means more underaged drinking, as there isn’t a study in the nation that doesn’t show private retailers with dramatically lower compliance rates than government run State Stores. And while I’m not particularly ashamed or regretful about my own underaged drinking, I think the kids at the Stranger should have to get their booze the same way I did… by stealing it from their parents’ liquor cabinet.
I don’t disagree that our State Store system is an anachronistic relic of the post-prohibition era, one that our politicians would never dare attempt to implement today. But the same could be said about Social Security, and I don’t see the Stranger making similar arguments for dismantling that.
And, I’m totally unswayed by the SECB’s whining hissy-fit that this is what our legislators somehow deserve for refusing to act on their own; it’s not legislators who will lose from this ill-conceived, industry-backed initiative, but the entire state. Personally, I live just three blocks from a Rainier Ave. gas station minimart, and I can’t tell you how much I dread the convenience of late-night liquor sales.
The impact of this measure is too great, and the consequences potentially too costly to be left to an up or down vote on a mass-marketed initiative. Once we dismantle the State Stores we will never go back, so even if we were to pursue such a reform, we should only do so after a thoughtful and deliberative process.
That is why I emphatically urge you to ignore my drunken, impatient colleagues at the Stranger, and vote No on I-1100.
And I fully expect my friends at the Stranger to take this post in the spirit in which it is intended. Or in their case, the spirits.
No thanks, Goldy. Voted for it. Ballot already mailed, in fact.
I agree that voting no on both of these measures is the right choice. I don’t necessarily agree that privatization is a bad thing, but I don’t think that hard liquor should be readily available in any outlet willing to pony up the dough to get a license. Where I grew up, liquor sales were privatized, but you still needed to buy them in a store devoted specifically to alcohol. Seems like that might be a decent model here, since the state could just lease out the existing properties to private ventures and then sell licenses for expansion.
Can’t comment on the issue at hand, as I don’t live in your lovely State, but…..finally! A look at the pale underbelly of the Slog production facilities! Also, I didn’t realize that I could probably apply for a job there, if I lived in Seattle, as I can totally hold my liquor, and I frequently wear platform shoes, so I wouldn’t come in contact with the sticky floor–bonus!
Sorry, my selfish desire to purchase gigantic cheap bottles of Kirkland Signature vodka less than 10 minutes from my house instead of having to wait until I visit family in Phoenix renders me incapable of caring about predictions of an upsurge I teen drinking, alcoholism, etc. The Yes bubble has been filled, the inner and outer envelopes have been sealed, and postage has been affixed. NEXT.
Nope. Yes on 1100. Can’t stand the current system any longer. And the state shouldn’t be involved with liquor sales. They can tax the shit out of it if they so desire, but you should be able to buy liquor everywhere you can buy beer and wine.
Goldy is A. Birch Steen!
Your open invitation to my private wine yurt office is rescinded.
I think there’s an argument to be made about the role of government. It’s not just about convenience, but do we think it’s appropriate for government to be playing this role in our society? Does this type of regulation provide a significant benefit to society in some way?
If you’re worried about the issue of underage drinking specifically… why not just significantly increase the focus on enforcement (and retailer education) for private retailers? Why go to the trouble of having this system where government has a huge role in liquor distribution & sales? If you’re worried about late night sales, why not pass a law that prohibits late night sales from private retailers?
Also, um, your link doesn’t prove your point in that paragraph at all. I was expecting to see some studies about what has happened in other states who’ve liberalized liquor laws…
Nonsense. The existing system simply exploits this sort of sentiment to impose yet another luxury tax.
If the goal were to reduce consumption then the markups and taxes would be based on alcohol content, not wholesale price.
If the state really did have publis saftey in mind it would have shown this over the last several decades by creating a tax a markup policy that taxed cheap booze as heavily as pricey booze.
It’s only when it’s time to try to win supporters that they trot out this sort of thing as a serious concern.
It’s not just convenience. The legislature knew that the State monopoly was widely hated and did nothing. We live in a referendum state, and if the legislature drags it’s feet on a popular issue, you can expect a referendum. May not be the best way to get laws passed, but completely predictable that this would be on the ballot.
I’ll drink to that!
I-1100 affects small businesses too. Wine shops, speciality beer stores, and yes, privately owned state liqour stores are not going to be able to compete with corporations purchasing mass amounts of alcohol directly from the manufacturer.
Cutting out the distributors, which this bill explicitly does, is going to make it extremely difficult for small businesses to get alcohol at a reasonable price. Alcohol prices in privately owned smaller shops, are going to go up, while Costco prices are going to drop like a rock. What do you think is going to happen? Hundreds of local businesses are going to drop dead because someone wanted booze cheaper, without looking at the real costs.
You won’t have more variety, and if you do, it will be at a higher cost. Small manufacturers won’t have a way of distributing their goods, and big box stores won’t be interested in dealing directly with small manufacturers.
Small independently owned shops, who currently have specialty items now, will be driven out of business. Their big box competitors will grossly under cut their prices, because they won’t have to be distributors fees.
It’s a lose lose situation, unless you really REALLY like massive amounts cheap, low quality alcohol, at the cost of quality, state revenue, and diversity.
TLDR; I-1100 will drive nearly all small wine shops out of business. Vote NO!
Bravo Goldy! This is the first time I’ve disagreed with the SECB and I have been utterly dismayed at the lack of perspective. Thank you for speaking up.
I always thought that anti-civil liberties leftists were largely a European phenomena. I guess we have them here too.
You are aware that the ‘what about the children’ argument (essentially the anti-civil liberties argument you are making) is the exact same refrain favored by authoritarian social conservative jackasses the world over aren’t you?
kinaidos @10,
You’re totally wrong on the alcohol tax. It is an excise tax based on volume, not a sales tax based on price. You pay the same tax per unit on a bottle of cheap whiskey as you do on a pricey bottle of single malt scotch. Same as cigarettes and gasoline.
Maybe I slept through the details, but I still don’t understand the argument that Washington stands to lose money on I-1100. Would it not reduce the State’s overhead and increase liquor sales, while not eliminating the option to tax? Someone clue me in.
Alcohol is a lot more toxic and dangerous than is weed, so the idea of proliferating outlets is awful.
Sorry, still voting for it. I don’t need a nanny state monopolizing the sale of and driving up the cost of liquor “because they really really need the money right now”.
1100 keeps the taxes the same but the state will lose the revenue (profit) to the retailers. It’s not a whole lot of money (just a few mil), but we can’t afford it. I might vote for an 1100+ that increases the taxes to make up for the lost revenue. That won’t happen through the legislature because of the damn Eyman thing which likely will pass. I might vote for it if the governor announced she would call a special session to seek an increase in liquor taxes.
@17 – He may have been wrong about the way alcohol was taxed, but, ironically, his point still applies.
His point was that if the state *really* wanted to manage drinking, they would tax cheaper liquor that is more readily abused at a higher rate than the premium liquor. As of now, the state taxes Monarch Vodka at the same rate as Grey Goose.
In my underage drinking and driving days I had no problem getting blind shitfaced on numerous cans of Carling’s Black Label which was readily available from any grocery store and was quite a bit cheaper than booze.
Dougsf @18,
That’s like saying that Costco would lose money by taking on the extra burden of selling liquor. The State Stores are operated at a profit, separate from the taxes they generate. That’s the same profit Costco and other big retailers are after.
Starve the state! Make a nanny state liberal cry!
@16 Thank you, my thoughts exactly. Alaska taxes the hell out of liquor, and sells it in gas stations- yet the state still hasn’t collapsed into alcohol fueled mayhem by children or otherwise… and the availability of booze definitely helps when having to talk about a certain ex-governor.
@17,
Top shelf liquor is vastly more marked up than bottom shelf. Shit, a year or two ago, the state partly balanced the budget by increasing the markup on top shelf liquor, with nominal increases on the price of bottom shelf. You are either deluded or lying.
@14,
What the fuck are you talking about? Specialty wine and beer stores already compete with big retailers, and they already can’t/don’t offer cheap wine and beer. I go to Bottleworks or 12th & Olive with the expectation that I can’t get three-buck chuck there, in which case I’m going to those stores for quality. Nothing about this law is going to change that.
Goldy’s right.
And if the SECB wasn’t all high on MJ – a far less addictive drug that doesn’t encourage violence – maybe we could have expected better.
Washington State’s current liquor laws are archaic and unsustainable (in the long run).
Like Algernon, I’d be fine with increasing the liquor taxes to make it revenue neutral to the State.
Besides, I’m turned off by the beer distributors underwriting the huge media buy for No on both 1100 and 1105.
There are over 800 retail employees at the liquor stores, but just over 80 enforcement agents for every grocery store, bar, tavern and casino in WA. Thats insane Let stores do retail, and get the Liquor Board back on enforcement! Yes on 1100!
I’m voting yes. I sometimes start to get swayed by the lost state revenue argument, but as soon as I hear the “protect us from ourselves” argument, I remember why I’m voting for it. Thanks but I’ll make my own adult decisions.
People drinking at home don’t drive drunk. People drinking in bars do when they’re trying to get back home.
Collin @22,
Well, I guess we can argue over the meaning of the word “rate,” but because it is a volume based excise tax, cheap booze is taxed at a higher effective rate as a percentage of the retail price than premium liquor.
Sorry, Goldy, for once I could not disagree with you more. Already voted yes and mailed in my ballot. I don’t see California, for example, collapsing under the weight of drunken drivers and shitfaced toddlers, but I can buy a bottle of decent vodka there for about half what I pay here, and I can buy it in the grocery store.
If it’s necessary to regulate alcohol in this manner, then we should be regulating tobacco in precisely the same manner: only selling it in the state tobacco stores at prescribed hours, at a vast markup. Or aren’t you worried about underage smoking and lung cancer deaths? What about the childrennnnn?
@26 Having done the majority of my underage drinking in Alaska, and a fair amount here, I think there is much more underage drinking done in Alaska than there is here.
olychick @30,
The reason we have so few enforcement officers is because the State Stores do such an effective job of enforcing themselves.
So now we’re going to shut the State Stores, which have over 90% compliance, lose the revenue they generate, and then spend more money hiring more enforcement officers to try to deal with the 70% compliance rate at thousands of retailers.
Yeah, that makes sense.
@34 – given their current economic situation, I don’t know if California is the best example you could be giving in support of cheap hard booze at the 7-11.
How about let’s not increase the enforcement officers at all. Didn’t you hear about that brilliant sting the WLCB pulled off on those dens of iniquity, art galleries? Seems kind of obvious they already have way too much time on their hands.
I told you about the folks here Goldy!
(I accidentally erased my first attempt at this)
I was just writing about the need for more police on the streets to respond the the larger numbers of alcohol related crime and how that will be taking money away from education, social services, and other services, like environomental protection. All this talk about civil freedoms and the nanny state is laughable relative to the likely long term outcomes to civil rights by a lot of extra cops.
I hadn’t even thought about the increase in enforcement officers necessary!
@36 – We already trust grocery stores to sell beer and wine. We already trust bars to sell beer, wine, and booze. The societal effect of one of these bill passing will be close to zero.
WA state is already well above the national average in alcohol related traffic fatalities. If anything, I’d expect drunk driving to go DOWN, not up. Bars are the culprit there, not people drinking at home.
Hear, hear!
The Stranger’s endorsement is based purely on some juvenile conception that they’ll be able to buy booze for $2 wherever they want at 4:00 in the morning. The SEB seriously dropped the ball when it comes to the depth of analysis they seem to give to other political questions, no matter how local and pointless. (“Someone on the Seattle School Board scowled at someone else!” Front page stuff.)
Privatization is fine, but let’s do it in a well thought out, orderly, and equitable way. That is, let our elected officials work this one out with input from all the parties.
1100 and 1105 are simply vehicles by which big businesses (Costco and Southern Wine and Spirits) are hijacking our referendum process to ride through a host of other more insidious structural changes that they couldn’t get the courts or the legislature to go with them on. If the Stranger was doing its job we’d be hearing about the impact of the fine print hidden in these initiatives under a mask of “Liquor at Costco! Yeeehaw!” and not Cienna’s (admittedly awesome sounding) wine yurt.
NO on BOTH.
@37 – Alcohol revenue for CA’s budget mess would be like putting a band-aid on a shrapnel victim.
CA’s problem is the 2/3 majority required in their legislature to enact any new taxes. Luckily, WA wouldn’t be stupid enough to go down THAT road … right?
I enjoy a good cocktail as much as anyone and more than some, yet I voted no on both measures. None of the yes arguments convinced me. There are already plenty of people drunk on 40’s pissing on my fence and sleeping under my back stairs without having cheap hard liquor avaialble, thank you very much.
You don’t just give away the farm and expect to keep getting paid for the produce. Lower liquor costs mean lower tax revenue. Sorry folks, but we have to fund the state somehow.
@32: you realize that bars buy liquor from stores, just like the rest of us, right?
@41, the legislature has had ample opportunity to work this out in a thought out, orderly and equitable way. They seem to not be able to do this simple thing that is obvious residents want. Fuck them.
The only reason I am voting no is because of the loss of state revenue. However, if we somehow increased the tax on liquor to cover this loss I would be all for privatization.
This article is terrible and makes a lot of claims based on “studies” and yet the single “citation” links to an OPINION piece by the Seattle Times, written by a reverend, who also fails to provide any actual references to scientific study.
I don’t care if the Stranger is a bunch of drunks that substitute real desks for stacked wine boxes. They are still much better writers and make more valid points than does the author of this article.
Goldy, your arguments are utterly unconvincing. You make it sound like people can’t already buy alcohol in the form of beer and wine just about anywhere. Yes, it’s true, beer and wine can get you drunk too!
I’ve spent extensive amounts of time all over the country and the world where you can pop into a convenience store and pick up a bottle of vodka. I want that here, because the way we do it now makes no sense me. As for the lost revenue? Am I supposed to be sad that the government is losing a source of revenue they shouldn’t have had in the first place? They’ll find a way to make up for it; trust me.
I was actually a little bit on the fence on this one, but these specious arguments have convinced me that we need to get this passed. Filling in the bubble…now.
@27 I-1100 does away with the requirement that all stores purchase alcohol through Distributors, which will lower alcohol prices even further for big box stores able to deal directly with alcohol manufacturers, in and out of state. This part of the law is highly ignored and will be CATASTROPHIC for small business owners who will likely have to increase prices as big box stores are able to drop them even further.
Wow, did you steal this verbatim from Joel Connelly? Because it reads like one of his screeds against something he doesn’t like for some prudish reason.
@44 – Your point is what exactly?
Andy, just remember that this year’s Eyman initiative will probably pass, putting a 2/3rds requirement on any tax measure, including one to make up the revenues lost due to liquor privatization. And with at least a third of the legislature composed of people who will never vote for a tax increase under any circumstance, and you’ve just put a major cripple into an already struggling state budget. Sorry, but I kinda like the state liquor stores. They work fine for the 2 – 3 times a year that I buy booze.