MAIL ORDER AND Internet sales of alcohol, especially wine, could be chilled by a bill pending in the Senate that would permit state authorities to file federal lawsuits against marketers for violating their liquor laws.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who introduced the legislation, said permitting state attorneys general to sue out-of-state liquor companies and wineries for violating state liquor laws would reduce consumer fraud, “ensure that minors are not provided with unfettered access to alcohol” and ensure that states collect all taxes due on liquor sales.
His bill, the Twenty-First Amendment Enforcement Act (S-577), would allow state authorities to seek federal injunctions against marketers who violate state laws relating to the sale and distribution of alcoholic beverages.
Reaction to the measure, which is being reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee Hatch chairs, has been mixed.
Reps. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R-MD) and Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-CA), Mothers Against Drunk Driving and several state attorneys general have endorsed it, as did Jay Essa, president of Geerlings & Wade, a Canton, MA direct marketer of wines.
Essa didn’t see the bill as a threat to either his firm or other legitimate wine direct marketers. However, he suggested the bill might affect some of his firm’s competitors-which he didn’t name -that “shop across state lines with little or no regard for the law.”
There was no immediate comment on the proposed measure from the Direct Marketing Association.
Republican California congressman and vintner George Radanovich blasted Hatch’s bill, saying it “invites [an] abuse of the [federal] court system and a trampling of the rights of out-of-state citizens in order to satisfy the demands of politically powerful local interests.”
Radanovich, who owns a small winery in Mariposa, CA, says he isn’t convinced that direct shipment of wine, beer or spirits is a major factor in alcohol abuse by teenagers. “The federal government shouldn’t expand its reach into the private purchase of consumers, or the activities of small business which makes up the largest part of the wine business,” he says.
“There is no need for states to be granted access to the overburdened federal court system as a second federal venue in which to pursue citizens and small wineries,” says John A. De Luca, Wine Institute president, adding: “Interstate commerce and burgeoning e-commerce should not be hindered.”
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