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After a day at the state's Department of Motor Vehicles, the natural response is to head home, contemplate suicide and then down a couple of drinks in quick succession. But imagine if you lived in a place where you had to go to a state office every time you wanted to pick up a bottle of booze. In Virginia and 17 other states, the only option for buying a bottle of scotch, vodka or gin is a store staffed and stocked by government workers, and owned by the state.
While the 80 million citizens of most of those sorry states are stuck, there may be a tequila sunrise on the horizon for Virginia. The commonwealth's governor-elect, Bob McDonnell, campaigned on a promise of liberating the liquor stores. (Note: This is not the same as campaigning on the promise of giving everyone free booze, a once-common American electoral practice now sadly lost to history.)
In most of the liquor-monopoly states, the retail and wholesale liquor lockdown arrived with the end of Prohibition, settled in with a bottle of Jack and never left. Virginia's Alcoholic Beverage Control system dates from 1934. Fearing the pathologies that might spring from Prohibition's leftover moonshining and bootlegging infrastructure, the state's lawmakers decided that hooch-specific law enforcement was still needed. So they put the folks previously in charge of keeping demon rum out of the hands of John Q. Public into the business of selling it to him. As a practical matter, this meant that people in the business of selling liquor also had a mandate to arrest and prosecute every single one of their competitors. Convenient.
The arrangement continues to this day. Virginia has laws on the books prohibiting the importation of alcohol from neighboring states. The punishment for rum-running in 2009 is a $2,500 fine, a year in jail and/or confiscation of the car in which the rum was run.
Admittedly, the laws are rarely enforced. But, still, why would otherwise law-abiding Virginians take such a risk? Because state-run liquor stores are god-awful. As the old "Annie Hall" gag would have it: The booze is terrible, and the portions are so small! Virginia currently is host to a mere 334 liquor stores for 8 million people. Meanwhile Washington, D.C., with a population of a little over 500,000, has more than 500 stores. In densely populated Northern Virginia, the closest store is frequently in Washington.
Even if the closest store is in Virginia, shoppers often have good reason to prefer a trek to the District of Columbia. The atmosphere of the older locations tends toward Department of Motor Vehicles chic -- dirty linoleum, fluorescent lighting, grudging service. In some places, the liquor and the clerk sit together behind bulletproof glass. In others, the limited selection of mainstream brands are lined up along dusty industrial shelving.
Let's do a little comparison shopping (something that's impossible in Virginia, by the way, since every store sells the same stuff at the same prices). Say you're looking to buy a bottle of Virginia Gentleman bourbon in Old Dominion. A 1.75-liter bottle will set you back $24.90 in one of Virginia's package stores. Pick up an identical bottle at Calvert Woodley Fine Wines & Spirits, located four miles from the Virginia border in the District of Columbia, and it will cost you a mere $15.88 (on sale from the everyday low price of $17.99). With that kind of a price differential, no wonder it's illegal to bring that bourbon back to its old Virginia home. Meanwhile, Virginia's home bartenders have been left behind in the cocktail renaissance under way in some of the more liberated states, since state store managers are afforded virtually no discretion about what they stock -- and are therefore unlikely to have unusual spirits.
McDonnell, who will be inaugurated next month, sees those liquor licenses as a gold mine for the budget-crunched commonwealth. The booze biz brings in about $100 million annually to state coffers but comes with a lot of baggage -- pension liabilities, overhead, the headache of running a 334-store retail operation. By selling off the stores, offering a bunch of new licenses and continuing to tax alcohol, Virginia could reap a massive temporary windfall -- McDonnell projects something in the $500-million range -- and no loss of income in the long run.
Liquor liberation isn't a done deed: Plenty of powerful people benefit from the current arrangement. But McDonnell's campaign promise was a popular one. Similar pushes have met surprising gustatory and budgetary success in Iowa and West Virginia. And if McDonnell gets his way, Virginia may soon be a place where a thousand elderflower liquers and creme de violettes bloom.
Katherine Mangu-Ward is a senior editor at Reason magazine.
Photo of Virginia's ABC Store 205, circa 1948, from the Virginia Department of Alcohol Beverage Control
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