Pour us a pint of reform, bartender.
It’s time for another round in what has become Colorado’s yearly Battle of the Bottle, where liquor stores and convenience stores debate about who should be allowed to sell full-strength beer.
We admire the cleverness of the latest twist: A state law in effect next year will force the owners of restaurants and bars to stop selling beer that contains low levels of alcohol.
The law, the brainchild of lobbyists for convenience and grocery stores, means that the local pub will no longer be able to sell the 3.2 percent beer that the stores are limited to selling. That means, for example, Irish pubs would no longer be able to sell pints of Murphy’s Irish Stout because of its low alcohol content.
The new law is an attempt to force legislators to deal with Colorado’s continued Prohibition-era hangover and overhaul the state’s archaic liquor laws.
Perhaps putting a former brewpub entrepreneur into the governor’s office will finally spur such reform.
Technically, bars, restaurants and liquor stores in Colorado never should have been able to sell the lighter versions of brands like Shiner, Amstel, Heineken, Michelob and Shipyard. Their licenses allow them to sell spirits, wine and beers that fall into the “malt liquor” category: brew stronger than 4 percent alcohol by volume or 3.2 percent by weight. But restaurants and bars have been getting away with offering the lighter beers for years, according to The Denver Post’s Jessica Fender.
However, convenience and grocery stores are restricted to selling only beer at or below that threshold, thanks to rules aimed at limiting the flow of alcohol to the general public, according to Fender’s story. Grocers and convenience store owners have argued, convincingly, for years that being forced to sell only the lower-octane beer hurts their bottom line.
Likewise, liquor-store owners are confined by other state laws that limit their presence to a single location. They also are prevented from negotiating deals with wholesalers.
Starting in January, state regulators will be required to enforce the 3.2 percent limitations in bars, and beer makers will have to test their offerings and document alcohol contents.
A possibly dangerous side effect of the new regulatory climate is that it won’t be as easy for bar patrons who want to drink more responsibly.
We would rather see beer, wine and liquor sold in Colorado in a free market without all of the strange entanglements that have been added over the years, but we understand there is no simple, pain-free solution to the present problem. The out-of-date laws have created a unique environment of winners and losers for so many years that changing it now would cause lots of upheaval.
We’ve suggested that lawmakers form a panel of stakeholders representing the various special interests to suggest fair ways to bring liquor laws up to date.
Forming such a panel would seem a perfect task for Gov.-elect John Hickenlooper, and we hope one of the new governor’s accomplishments is working with all sides to finally bring some market reason to Colorado’s suds.
