Government-Run Liquor Monopoly . . . in Freedom-Loving New Hampshire?

Jon sent me the link to this article on Wizbang, suggesting that I'd want to blog about it:

In many states, the sale of hard liquor is tightly regulated. People who want to sell booze have to jump through all kinds of hoops to run a liquor store, and it's expensive as hell. But not in New Hampshire.

Here, we don't bother with any of that nonsense. Nobody has the time or the resources to properly do all that, so we simply don't let them. The New Hampshire State Liquor Commission runs about 70 liquor stores around the state, and is projected to contribute about 115 million dollars to the state budget. And in a state with as small as us (roughly 1.1 million people), that's hardly chump change.

And that's the usual argument for keeping liquor sales within the government's hands: the huge (some might say obscene) profits to be made in a monopoly situation. And that's on top of the various excise and other tax levies hidden in the price of the alcohol. No wonder at all that the state doesn't want private enterprise horning in on the gravy train, is it?

This was my favourite part of the article:

Aside 2: Every now and then Massachusetts gets fed up with it's subjects — er, residents — sneaking across the border and buying their booze on the cheap in New Hampshire and cracks down. At one point in the 70's, they had undercover state troopers sitting in parking lots and radioing in license plates of customers to be busted when they crossed back into Massachusetts. That tactic was ended after New Hampshire's governor at the time ordered New Hampshire cops to arrest the Mass. troopers for loitering.

The closet anarchist in me loves the image of cops arresting cops, I must admit!

One definition of alcoholism is when a person has reached a point of dependency on alcohol to the point where they suffer when it is withdrawn. Is there a term for a state that is dependent on the revenues of alcohol, and would suffer greatly if it was taken away?

I think this overstates the case, although the government in question would undoubtedly fight as hard as it could to preserve the current arrangement. I've already covered the argument for selling off Ontario's equivalent, the LCBO.

It seems that New Hampshire will cheerfully embrace the benefits of socialism, as long as we can get other people to do the dirty work and pay for it.

It's a lovely racket while it lasts, eh?