However, we hope a few minutes can be stolen to consider other measures — like SB452.
The bill is sponsored by Sen. Bill Holtzclaw, R-Madison, and co-sponsored by Sens. Phil Williams, R-Rainbow City, and Paul Sanford, R-Huntsville. It’s currently on the Senate calendar following a unanimous vote from the Committee on Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Development.
It would allow brewpubs and craft brewers — like Gadsden’s Back Forty Beer Co. — to sell their products for off-premises consumption. Customers would be able to purchase a gallon of beer per day.
The original version also would allow craft breweries to operate on-premises restaurants where their beers could be sold. A substitute bill has been offered without that provision, but just allowing people to take beer home from a taproom — Alabama and Georgia are the only two states where that is prohibited — would be significant progress.
This legislation is being pushed as a jobs bill, and that certainly is applicable. Craft brewers and brewpubs would get more business if it’s enacted, and more business requires more employees.
The change would promote tourism. Wine lovers (oenophiles for the initiated) have long spent their vacations traveling to vineyards and sampling their wares. Craft beer aficionados have developed the same type of trails, and cities like Asheville, N.C., have made beer a predominant tourism focus.
All vacationers like to take home souvenirs. Wine lovers already can; it’s only fair that beer fans have the same privilege.
Above all, the bill would boost an industry that has gotten a lot of attention in Alabama and produces more beer each year, but still struggles to establish itself without any help from antiquated and restrictive sales and distribution policies.
A study by the Brewers Association, cited by the Alabama Brewers Guild, ranked Alabama 50th among states and the District of Columbia in the per capita impact of craft beer to its economy.
The guild asked the association to assess what would happen if that impact could be raised to the national average. The projection: nearly 3,000 new jobs and an extra $284 million for the state’s gross domestic product.
Those numbers won’t sway people who simply oppose drinking, period, and will contest anything that expands the sale of alcoholic beverages to home folks or visitors.
Their opposition should be noted and respected, but the Senate and House need to pass this legislation and move the industry forward.
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