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Wednesday, November 9, 2011

State of Washington Kills State Liquor Dispensaries State Will Make $80 Million More

Yesterday, voters in Washington State voted to do away with their state liquor dispensaries.  The new law also allows wholesale purchasers to go around local distributors and this tore down yet another law on their books.

Starting in June of 2012 the numbers of places where you can buy liquor by the bottle will go from 328 to 1,428. Prices are expected to fall while revenue to the state will go up by nearly $80 Million.

THE GUARDIAN has long been an advocate of doing away with the antiquated liquor dispensary system in Idaho.  In Washington it will mean more than 900 state employees will lose their jobs,  Liquor prices are expected to drop but not to the levels of California.  Washington will hang onto high levels of sin-taxation.

Costco was the main contributor in the effort to overturn Washington's liquor law regarding state run dispensaries.  Costco ponied up a cool  $22.5 Million of the total of $22.7 Million spent to pass Initiative 1183 in Washington.  It will be interesting to see if Costco sees an opportunity to go after states like Idaho with antiquated liquor sales models and expensive delivery overhead.  Here's a link for more info  .

2 comments:

  1. Idaho will never do away with this plum job the Gov. gets to appoint. This whole concept just makes too much sense for Idaho to even look at something this progressive.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Does anyone know how DUI statistics per thousand or any other discrete data for states with controls like Idaho v. states having no dispensary system on liquor. I suspect there are probably no difference. Hard core drunks generally go for the cheapest alcohol they can obtain.

    ReplyDelete

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