Yankee Brew News Archive

Logic-Defying Laws Persecute Beer

Originally Published: 07/95

By: Kerry J. Byrne

Beer drinkers should applaud the recent Supreme Court decision which allows for brewers to print alcohol content on beer containers. It is nice to know that, at least in this instance, beer drinkers are afforded the same rights as those who enjoy other - and usually stronger - alcohol-containing beverages.

However, not all is rosy in the beer world. The following is a random sampling of things that make little sense. I should mention that it is not comprehensive, unbiased or scientific. Please refrain from the monthly tirade of insults which seem to be hurled in my direction after each issue of YBN is published. I do not need any more letters from people in Cambridge that began with: 'My cat Fifi was insulted when you said...'

You mean I can get an abortion, but not a tattoo?

That great liberal bastion known as the Bay State is home to some real doozies when it comes to legal logic. Like this one:

You try to buy beer in a package store. You don't drive, so you don't have a license. You present your liquor ID.

"Sorry, you can't buy liquor with a liquor ID," says the man behind the counter. "See the sign - only Mass. Drivers' Licenses."

"But I don't drive."

"Well, then, you can't buy alcohol."

"Let me get this straight. You're so worried about underage kids obtaining alcohol with a fake ID, then driving, that you won't sell me alcohol unless I'm getting behind the wheel of an automobile!"

In fairness, I must say that this is not a law of the Commonwealth. But the laws are so strict, and the punishments so severe to the retailer, that it forces many retailers to adopt this policy. It is, in effect, a policy that punishes the innocent: those over 21 without a driver's license and those over 21 with a driver's license from another state. How effective is this policy? How many 19-year-old college kids have sat back and said, 'shucks, I guess we can't get any beer tonight. Don't you know about the law.'? (Note: See reactants theory below.)

What really gets me, is that the law in this state differentiates between alcohol in the form of wine, and alcohol in the form of beer. For example, a retailer wants to promote his fine selection of wines. What does he do? He holds a wine tasting in his store.

How about the retailer who wants to promote his fine selection of beer. A beer tasting, right?! Wrong. That is against the law, and the retailer will be punished. Massachusetts is not the only New England state to discriminate against beer drinkers. In Connecticut, you can go to any winery, take a tour, and at the end buy wine to bring home with you. However, you can not go to any brewery, take a tour and buy beer to bring home with you. (See story Ernie Adamo's story about Connecticut elsewhere in this issue.)

Twenty-fifth-century anthropologist touts the effectiveness of Twinkie-dating

Look at a box of Twinkies - you know, the yellow pseudo-food stuffed with synthetic 'faux' cream, famous for its alleged ability to decay more slowly than the cellophane wrapper it comes in - and what do you see? That's right. A nutritional information label. Am I missing something? Or should I be eating Twinkies for the many vital nutrients they provide? (Right now, I am looking through my history books, trying to find how many 18th-century sailors were saved from scurvy when they landed on South Pacific islands with great big Twinkie groves.)

Beer-- in most cases made with things that actually grow and exist in a natural state - is one of the few foods on which producers can not put nutritional information on the label. Beer has no fat, no cholesterol. It has vitamin B. It is roughly 95 percent water. Why can't we be told this? Is it because of the argument of some that beer is not food? Hmm....let me see. When ancient Egyptians built mankind's greatest legacy, the pyramids, they did so on the strength provided by their daily diet of bread and beer.

When Shakespeare wrote the greatest plays (for the sake of argument, let's just assume he wrote them) of the English language, he did so with a mug of ale at his side. England grew to become the world's mightiest empire with an army and navy fed by a weekly ration of beer (a policy which existed even in World War II).

One anthropologist argued that agrarian society - and, eventually, civilization as we know it - developed when nomadic peoples settled down to grow barley so that they might have a continuous supply of beer. I have been unable to find a great person or civilization whose main source of nutrition was the Twinkie. Beer is not food? Twinkies are not food. Beer could use nutritional labels. Twinkies could do without them.

Businessman arrested after firing kettle

I was brewing at the brew-on-premise shops Modern Brewer in Somerville and Barleymalt & Vine in Newton. Owners Jeff Pzena (MB) and Dave Ruggerio (BMV) did a very good job of talking me through the process using equipment I had never used before. But that's all they could do. They couldn't even turn on the water for me; they couldn't touch anything. In fact, if your fermenter is to be moved while you're not there, they must get another customer to do it for you.

Why? Because if they, or any of their employees, touch the equipment (except to clean it) while you are brewing or while it contains beer, they suddenly cross some sort of barrier and become a brewery, not a brew-on-premise shop. And in order to get the brew-on-premise concept through licensing channels, they could not market themselves as breweries.

Pzena and Ruggerio are not the only small-businessmen in the New England beer industry to have to put up with intrusive laws such as these. When Atlantic Coast Brewing Company first opened it was a two-man outfit. Chris Lohring and Alex Reveliotty brewed beer, made sales and swept floors. What that could not do were make sales and distribute their beer. One had to make deliveries (sometimes out of his own car) while the other had to make sales, and, according to the letter of the law, the twain shall not meet, lest they be punished.

"Excuse me sir, is this the Delta House?"

Sociology professor David Hanson, of the State University of New York in Potsdam, wrote a book called Preventing Alcohol Abuse: Alcohol, Culture and Control.

In it he discusses strict laws regarding the consumption of alcohol and how they do little to achieve their ends. In fact, he argues, these laws have the opposite affect: they promote binge drinking and other abuses. "Before Prohibition," he said, "people would go out and drink wine or beer or whatever at a leisurely pace. They would relax and enjoy themselves. But with Prohibition, spirit production went up because people were looking for a way to transport alcohol more easily. The speakeasy did not promote leisurely drinking, either. They caused people to consume strong drinks, often of questionable quality - in some cases doctored with embalming fluid."

Hanson goes beyond Prohibition. He examines other nations, other cultures, and other periods in American history where alcohol consumption was--even by those now considered underage in the U.S.--viewed as a part of the daily routine. He has found that social pressure is more effective than government mandate as a means of controlling alcohol abuse.

"Puritans like Increase and Cotton Mather said that 'beer is the good creature of God.' But abuse of drinking was very much frowned upon," said Hanson. "There was no social pressure to drink to excess. The pressure was against abuse. You could refuse a drink without being a social outcast."

A modern example of ineffective legal mandates can be seen in the form of minimum-age requirements, which were virtually non-existent before Prohibition, but which Hanson feels are a vestige of the zeal which created that movement.

Basically kids are told their whole lives that it is wrong to drink, that they are too young to drink, and that they shan't drink until they mature suddenly the day they turn 21.

So what happens? The second they get to college they become ravenous alcohol fiends, partying to the wee hours of the morning and ingesting amounts of alcohol great enough to intoxicate herds of large farm beasts.

Hanson attributes this phenomenon to the 'reactants theory.' "If people are denied something they think they have the right to, then the way they try to exercise their freedom is by disobeying the law," he said. "Once the federal legislation was passed that essentially mandated a drinking age of 21, we found that the proportion of underage drinkers in college surpassed that number of legal-age drinkers.

"We have found consistent empirical evidence to support this theory." His solution? "Education about drinking begins at home at an early age. Kids learn about handling alcohol appropriately from their parents." Not from the government, whose actions often make you want to say...

'Duh?'

The city officials in the cultural backwater of Quincy, Massachusetts (motto: Please visit. We're near Boston), which I call home, are so afraid of underage drinkers boozing it up by any means possible, that they've strongly suggested to retailers that they put up signs that say "This Is Not A Beer" next to bottles of Sam Adams Triple Bock.

If you define beer as a fermented beverage made with malted grains, then Triple Bock certainly is a beer. It uses an ale yeast, like most other beers in the world. It is...a beer. Why, then, the sign? Because the second the officials in this great big void of knowledge heard that Triple Bock had large amounts of alcohol, they panicked. And what happens when you panic? You don't think.

They envisioned hordes of underage kids running out and buying tons of this new hi-octane Sam Adams beer and getting sloshed. What they didn't realize is that it makes no sense for kids to spend $4.99 for an 8.4-ounce bottle of beer with 16 percent alcohol.

First, if kids want to get hammered, all they have to do is spend $4.99 for a pint of hard liquor with 40 percent alcohol, or perhaps $4.99 for a gallon jug of wine with 12 percent alcohol. For a kid who has nothing but the shirt on his back and the money he stole from an old woman at the bus stop, it is not feasible to buy Triple Bock.

Second, once these ruffians tried Triple Bock and realized that it tastes nothing like Bud ($4.99 for 72 ounces at 4 percent alcohol) they'd probably never drink it again.

And third, if kids under 21 aren't supposed to be in package stores in the first place, how the hell are they supposed to see these signs? Maybe they would be more effective if they were placed in the high school corridors.