The Pennsylvania government controls not just liquor sales but wine sales too, causing all kinds of inconvenience to consumers. The state is currently trying out a novel approach to making things easier:
The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board here will test a self-service, wine-selling kiosk, to see if it can effectively prevent the sale of wine to underage consumers and those who are intoxicated. [...]
To purchase wine from the kiosk, a consumer would first insert her driver’s license for age and identity verification. The license barcode will be read, and the picture on the license will be matched with a video image of the consumer standing before the kiosk, Nick Hays, spokesman for the PLCB, told SN.
“The match is confirmed by Liquor Control Board employees, represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, monitoring the transaction from a remote center,” he said.
Sobriety is confirmed by a built in breath sensor. It requires no contact and provides an instant blood-alcohol reading, said Hays. PLCB representatives can lock out purchases by consumers who are intoxicated. Transactions can only be completed with credit card payments.
Hey, that’s really smart! Or they could just, you know, privatize the market and let adults sell wine to each other. But that’s crazy talk.
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Defending Pennsylvania’s new statewide smoking ban, PA health department spokesman Holli Senior says:
Senior noted that more than 20,000 Pennsylvania adults die each year from their own smoking and approximately 300,000 Pennsylvanians under the age of 18 die either directly or indirectly because of smoking.
Nationally, it is estimated that between 1 million and 3 million adult non-smokers die each year from exposure to second-hand smoke, noted Senior.
As Michael Siegel notes, these numbers are absolutely absurd. In Pennsylvania there are about 125,000 deaths each year from all causes. Nationally there are about 2.5 million. Thus there’s no way these figures are even close to correct. His conclusion? Secondhand smoke is essentially, but not technically killing people, resulting in hordes of zombies walking among us. Either that or anti-smoking activists will now say any crazy thing they please to get their way.
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CBS reports that Pennsylvania lawmakers have introduced legislation that would liberalize the state’s raw milk laws, allowing farmers to sell unpasteurized dairy products of all kinds, not just milk and aged cheese. If the bill passes, it will be thanks in large part to Mark Nolt, the Mennonite farmer who has been arrested, convicted, and had more $20,000 of his equipment seized by farm officials. His civil disobedience and unflinching defense of the freedom to sell directly to consumers has been admirable and it would be great to see it pay off.
Nolt’s case was the lede in my raw milk article for Reason.
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Lancaster Farming has run an article examining the prosecution of Mark Nolt and another Pennsylvania farmer who sold raw milk without a permit. The tactics used to bust these guys are more reminiscent of the War on Drugs than routine dairy regulation:
Chris Ryder, [Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture] spokesman, said additional citations are pending in relation to the two most recent incidents in which Nolt sold raw milk and cheese to undercover PDA agents this year.
Meanwhile, a Lancaster County farmer was found guilty on May 6 on one count of selling raw milk without the state required permit after he was initially charged with three counts.
Glenn Wise, a Mennonite minister who farms 23 acres just outside of Elizabethtown, Pa., was ordered to pay a fine of $50 in his case.
Wise, who spoke by phone on Tuesday, said he sold raw milk to an undercover PDA agent on three separate occasions after the agent signed a contract to become a member of Communities Alliance for Responsible Eco-Farming (CARE), an organization of which Wise is a member.
Two things are worth emphasizing here. The first is that Nolt could have slipped under the radar by maintaining his raw milk permit and selling his other raw milk products on the down low. His refusal to do so is an honest, principled protest of the state’s restrictive laws. The second is that these farmers’ customers were clearly informed, going so far as to sign contracts agreeing to the sale outside of the regulated system. This is not a case of consumers being manipulated; it’s a case of state officials interfering with the business of consenting adults.
The raw milk movement raises eyebrows with its eccentricity, but the people on the front lines are among the country’s most ardent defenders of economic freedom. I’d gladly raise a glass of unpasteurized milk to them — if I could.
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The good news: Pennsylvania’s legislature ground to a halt today in their attempts to pass a statewide smoking ban.
The bad news: It failed because it wasn’t strict enough and would have taken precedent over the more restrictive ban already in effect in Philadelphia.
I don’t have a clear opinion on whether these kinds of laws should be passed locally or on a state level, but I am very glad to be living in a Virginia, a state that actually bans smoking bans.
Previously:
Your Grand Old Party…
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Jacob Grier is a freelance writer, barista, mixologist, and magician in Portland, OR. He writes, eats, and drinks a lot. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Reason Online, The Oregonian, and other publications.
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