Forbes publishes piece on (yet another) creepy, anti-competitive law

September 27, 2016 | By ANASTASIA BODEN

Forbes has published my piece on Alabama’s proposed rule allowing the Alcoholicno-beer-no-peace Beverage Control Board to creep on craft beer consumers.  Although the Board says the rule is a way for it to enforce the state’s rigid controls on how much craft breweries can sell, those familiar with occupational licensing laws may suspect that the law is instead intended to impose an anti-competitive burden on craft breweries.  For every sale they make for the purpose of off-premise consumption, craft breweries will have to obtain and store consumers’ personal information before handing it over the government at the end of each month—that is, if they can first convince consumers to risk their privacy and buy beer from the craft breweries in the first place.

PLF filed a comment letter explaining the policy implications of such a law earlier this month.

As I note in the piece, “The proper, constitutionally valid purpose of economic regulations is to protect public health and safety, not to protect selected businesses by curbing competition from others.”

You can read the whole thing here.