Big changes sometimes demand first steps. That’s a pretty good way to describe the movement in Harrisburg this week to take Pennsylvania out of the Prohibition era by whittling away at our irrational state monopoly on alcohol sales.
For years, I’ve fought an entrenched bureaucracy to get Pennsylvania out of the liquor business. This week, Gov. Tom Wolf signed a bill that allows the sale of wine in grocery stores, direct shipments to homes and expanded sales in hotels and eating establishments.
The bill marks an important victory for people who believe that adults can make their own responsible choices when it comes to adult beverages. It marks progress, too, for our state budget. The new law is expected to add at least $150 million annually to state revenues.
Ideally, spirits will follow wine onto the grocers’ shelves, but legislative victories are often incremental. Nobody knows this better than Pennsylvanians, who have had to deal with the legacy of special interests deeply invested in the liquor status quo.
With wine moving from state stores onto grocery shelves, the convenience will prove irresistible. When privatization first broke through the legislative barricades three years ago, opponents used apocalyptic rhetoric that all but implied that alcohol sold by the state is somehow less intoxicating.
That overblown language will be proven false in the coming months and years. Soon enough, as the marketplace overtakes state bureaucracy, citizens will see the common sense in allowing private liquor sales.
This idea likely will take root especially in those rural counties where communities are saddled with revenue-losing state stores that are open only a few days a week.