Temperance advocates notwithstanding, the appearance of wine on grocery store shelves in B.C. is not the signal of Armageddon.
Nor will be, we predict, the anticipated addition of full-service liquor stores in grocery stores.
It is well past time that B.C. took a look at reforming archaic and restrictive liquor regulations that have kept it out of step with the rest of the world and have tended to automatically assume the guilt of all on the basis of the acts of some.
We must grant some freedom of choice among consumers in a democratic society, no matter how much we would like to preclude the acts of wrong-doers. Prohibition, however well-intended, has long been recognized as a failed experiment.
The availability of wine, beer and liquor in grocery and convenience stores in Europe and the U.S. has not led to a general unravelling of civilization there.
Granted, there are problems that have always been connected with consumption of alcohol. But as German legislators pointed out – when some called recently for increased regulation of alcohol sales in what is considered one of the most liberal drinking jurisdictions in the EU – existing laws already prohibit criminal behaviour.
Simply put, it is legal, within restraints already established, to buy and consume alcohol.
But criminal acts – including operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol – are still criminal acts, liable to full prosecution.
Perhaps our resources would be best spent on enforcement of existing laws, rather than extending a morass of regulation.
The sky-is-falling argument has been advanced at each stumbling step B.C. has taken to modernize its liquor laws, ever since prohibition (introduced in B.C. in 1917) was revoked in 1920.
Bizarre restrictive regulation that followed created the cheerless, no entertainment, no-food beer parlours that characterized B.C. through the Depression and beyond. It is now almost unbelievable to reflect that cocktail lounges weren’t even legal in B.C. until 1954.
At the same time such restrictions were in place, bootleggers, and even, it is rumoured, some government officials, got very rich indeed from the plethora of red tape.
Some 60 years later we are only just emerging from the last vestiges of this misguided paternalism. It’s time that B.C.’s government – which benefits to the tune of close to $1 billion in liquor revenues per year – treated consumers of alcohol like the adults they are under the law.