Letters: Liquor-store limit promotes temperance

The state Supreme Court recently struck down a law prohibiting ownership in more than three liquor stores, which seems to have no place in a free-market economy.

Actually, the law promotes temperance. The Temperance Movement resulted in Prohibition but began in the late 1800s as a moderation movement by wives watching husbands fall to the drink, losing jobs, families and health. Alcohol producers controlled the market, dictating scant margins for saloons, which subsidized the loss leader through prostitution and gambling.

SCOPPE: The Legislature’s gift to the liquor industry

Today, states promote moderation by prohibiting market control by the few. Why? Cheap and readily available alcohol promotes consumption, increasing alcoholism and its negative effects, including health problems, DUI, domestic violence, divorce and child abuse and neglect, increasing public and private cost for indigent care, police, social services, courts and commercial absenteeism. The greatest cost: family.

Don’t believe me? Google “England alcohol crisis.” England repealed its moderation laws, and big boxes seized the market, utilizing alcohol as the ultimate loss leader, creating the crisis.

Preserving the three-store limit and other moderation laws will not save society from liquor but will prevent its use as a loss leader. As a free-market libertarian, I cannot support increasing societal cost for private benefit.

Either the Legislature or the Supreme Court can fix this mess by simply recognizing the truth: The law promotes moderation, and moderation is good for all.