I couldn't find the facebook group...care to post a link?
http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show?id=42526
A really egregious attempt to reverse the opening market trends in the wine industry. This would be a huge blow to small, artisan wineries as the established system looks to prevent them from selling their products directly to consumers.
The comments by the bill sponsors that indicate this is about underage drinking and alcoholism flatly insults my intelligence. Write your representatives. There's also a stop HR5034 group on faceboook.
I couldn't find the facebook group...care to post a link?
This should be it:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/STOPHR...14589208561336
StopHR5034, all one word.
Text of the bill:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.5034:
LOL at the official title: Comprehensive Alcohol Regulatory Effectiveness (CARE) Act of 2010
The original article linked mentions a subcommittee hearing - you can read the full testimony here: http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/hear_100318.html.
Genedoc, my gut tells me this bill is going nowhere - no speech on introduction, there are only 3 other cosponsors (2 D, 2 R in total), there's no corresponding Senate bill. The only slight area of concern is that Delahunt is on the referral (Judiciary) Committee, and the three cosponsors are on the Subcommittee that held the hearing.
And not to turn this totally into a PPB debate, (and I understand exactly how/why this impacts wine sellers/producers negatively) but what's wrong with letting each state determine its own alcohol distribution rules? Yes, the bill would protect the states from lawsuits surrounding their liquor laws (most likely preventing lawsuits that say the state laws violate Federal commerce laws), but that doesn't prevent those states from amending their liquor laws to be more friendly to direct distribution.
As the introduction of this bill illustrates, the entrenched government protected monopolies held by wholesellers and distributors would most certainly not allow states to "amend their liquor laws to be more friendly to direct distribution". In fact, it's been the last 5 years of getting hammered in lawsuits that has lead to the introduction of HR 5034. Since Granholm v. Heald, the monopolies have been getting killed in court while small, family owned wineries and direct distributors have thrived thanks to the markets opening. People in North Carolina have been allowed to purchase wine direct from the winery instead of having to operate through multiple middle men. This would reverse all of that.
The notion that this is in any way about preventing alcoholism or keeping kids from getting alcohol is laughable. No kid I know wants to order a case of Cabernet from California. Kids get alcohol the exact same way they always have - get a friend who's legal to buy it for them.
How would this affect sending a bottle of scotch to someone in NC? I got my dad an 18 year old bottle a couple of Christmases ago and had it shipped directly to CH.
"Something in my vicinity is Carolina blue and this offends me." - HPR
I in NC can not purchase liquor online and have it delivered. I may purchase a small amount of liquor out of state and bring it into the state with me (I think the limit is something like 4 L per year). I'm not sure where in the law your situation fits, but given that NC has much more strict controls on liquor than on wine, I would not be surprised if you violated a law in making that shipment. But I'm not sure.