TOWARD SOME LESS RIDICULOUS BEER RULES
Increasing consumption provincewide is not necessarily a bad thing.
Ontario seems to be lurching toward a slightly more reasonable regime for retail alcohol. Break out the noisemakers! The Toronto Star reported on Friday that the government has been consulting with people in the pertinent industries and considering new options for beer and wine. Its proposal will likely be revealed in its upcoming budget. Convenience stores have long asked why they are shut out from beer and wine sales; the government so far has ignored their case. But it does seem to be open to grocery store beer sales. Some grocery stores have wine outlets in them already.
In typical Ontario fashion, this will not be a matter of the government simply declaring it legal for grocery stores to sell beer if they choose, provided they require ID from customers. No, that way lies anarchy. In Ontario, the land of the 3-L milk jug controversy, the mere suggestion of selling beer at grocery stores is fraught with regulatory questions that will be subject to lobbying from all sides. How big must a grocery store be to sell beer? Should it be allowed to sell 24-cases as well as six-packs? Foreign as well as domestic? Where should the aisle be and what should the signs say?
Nearly all of this — as with every ridiculous regulatory debate — has to do with appeasing political interests and industry stakeholders. The argument that only the Beer Store and the LCBO have employees with the expertise to check ID and make sure kids aren’t buying booze is sheer fearmongering.
There is, though, one reasonable publichealth argument, which is that many Ontarians drink too much already, and that increasing convenience could have the effect of increasing consumption. Increasing consumption provincewide is not necessarily a bad thing if it happens on the end of the spectrum where the occasional-to-moderate drinkers hang out, but when it happens on the other side, that’s a problem. But the status quo — a near-monopoly on retail beer sales held by a group of foreignowned companies — is the most ham-handed way possible of addressing that concern: by making beer legal and widely accessible, but just slightly less convenient and appealing than it might be.
Is the rational way to address problematic drinking to make it legal to pick up a two-four at the Beer Store on the nearest corner or a bottle of something at the LCBO in the nearest town, while enforcing a ban on picking up local wine at the farmer’s market or a six-pack of local craft beer with Friday night dinner?
Ontario has a deep-seated tendency to regard the status quo as the best of all possible worlds simply because it is the status quo. It’s good to see the government pushing back against that tendency, even a little.
But this is far from the end of the process. Convenience stores will wonder, rightly, why it’s OK to pick up beer at the grocery store, or at the dépanneur across the river, while they’re still cut out of those sales. They will rightly ask what the government’s rationale is for interfering in the market to such an extent. This would be a good time for the premier to develop a thorough, sound philosophy for alcohol retail, because the incremental approach is seldom fair or rational.