Re: Wine Politics Again!

[Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>]

At 09:26 PM 5/9/97 -0800, Tim May wrote:
>I am shipping a few bottles of California's finest merlot (much nicer than
>the trendy cabernets) to my sister and her husband in Hollywood, FL.

You're a bit late - merlots have been getting more trendy :-)
But Chiles hasn't signed the Florida law quite yet, so you're also early.
Do they even _grow_ wine in Florida?  You'd think it would be the 
cocaine industry trying to get their product regulated to keep prices high.

>There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.

It's especially ridiculous that shipping wine should be a *felony*.
Mike Froomkin points out that the Constitutional Amendment ending
Prohibition lets states make their own stupid decisions like this,
and it probably overrides Commerce Clause controls.
You'd expect that a law that's made primarily to protect business
interests would have business-oriented penalties - like fines for
conducting wine-shipping without a wine-shipping license,
or triple fines for not filling out paperwork in triplicate.

Does anyone know if either state's laws also penalize the 
recipient of the Demon Grape, or only the sender?  
(And is there a list of the state legislators on-line? 
"Dear Senator Foobar:  If you'd passed S.B.336, you'd be busted now!")

About 10 years ago, New Jersey legalized home-made wine and beer,
with a requirement that you get a $3 permit.  Nobody'd particularly
realized it wasn't legal, and in a heavily Italian state people had
been making wine at home since Prohibition ended (...),
and everybody agreed it was stupid to keep it illegal.
But the burons wanted to retain _some_ control, hence the permit.
Enough people complained about it that they dropped the
permit requirement pretty quickly.

#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
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