This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Say It Isn't So!: State Senate Republicans Threaten to Scuttle Liquor Sale Privatization

Democrats Launch Disingenuous Arguments to Retain Prohibition in Pennsylvania - Will the GOP Side With Them and Against the People?

In a rare demonstration of good sense and a desire for freedom to break out in provincial Pennsylvania, the State House has accomplished the near-impossible, a decisive 105-90 vote to approve...finally...the dismantling of our modern-day Prohibition, the Liquor Control Board stranglehold over the sale of alcoholic beverages.  Within the debate over the bill, the Democrats demonstrated themselves to be the party of the past, engaging in stunningly disingenuous argument, including the assertion that privatization would mean 5000 Liquor Control Board employees would be out of work, this despite the fact that hundreds more liquor stores would be permitted to operate under Governor Corbett's plan.

One would hope that there would now be smooth sailing to passage of this historic legislation in the State Senate, but it is not so.  Key Republican Senators threaten to join the Democrats in their intransigence.  Leaders Domenic Pileggi and Joseph Scarnati are not the least bit enthusiastic about ending Prohibition and threaten to expectorate in the face of a governor of their party, denying him the opportunity to do what governors before him have failed to accomplish.

One Republican House member noted in his argument for the bill that the Legislature is held in contempt by a significant majority of Pennsylvanians and that the legislation provides the opportunity to reverse negative perceptions and the belief that our leaders do not care about doing the people's business.  As a realist and longtime student of state politics, I am betting that the General Assembly will do what it always does, taking every opportunity to tell state citizens that they do not matter, that narrow special interests carry the day, defying logic.

Those who fight privatization should be asked why, if Pennsylvania's liquor control system is such a model for the nation, it has been eschewed by forty-eight more enlightened states and why they choose to ignore the clearly-demonstrated will of the ordinary Pennsylvanian.

I am not much of a drinker and I deplore the grief and misery that are brought to society every day through alcohol and its myriad irresponsible and combustible users, but I believe in freedom and in not punishing responsible alcohol consumers with a system that is unique in the nation for its level of oppression and paternalism.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?