Reports that an effort is under way to allow big box grocery stores, such as Walmart and Kroger, to sell wine in Mississippi call to mind the state’s convoluted thinking and history on alcohol consumption and sales.
Mississippi was the last state in the union to repeal prohibition in 1966, some 33 years after the national prohibition experiment had been repealed. But it was only on a local option basis and that’s still the case. Wine and whiskey can only be sold in counties or cities where the majority of the people want it, and only in liquor stores with a state permit and by the drink in restaurants and bars..
Beer was legal, also on a local option bases, long before 1966, but it is limited in alcohol content and already is available in the grocery stores that likely will sell wine if the current proposal becomes law.
Even before alcohol sales were legal, though, there was plenty of it sold in Mississippi, and the state taxed the illegal sales.
Since 1966, there have been some changes in regulations applying to alcohol, but a bedrock principle remains. A state agency dictates the minimum price for wine and liquor and decides which brands are sold. The Alcohol Beverage Control division of the Department of Revenue supplies the privately owned liquor stores in the state, marking up the wholesale price by 27 1/2 percent and deciding which brands to supply.
As long as the state keeps the monopoly on wine supplies and derives the revenue from it, shoppers in Mississippi won’t see a tremendous, if any, decrease in prices if and when the Legislature allows grocery stores to sell the product. There could be a little price break on some brands as big chains could opt to sell it at little or no profit to draw customers to other items. But the state markup is so high it prohibits the lower prices found in places like Louisiana and Texas.
The Clarion-Ledger’s Jimmy E. Gates predicts in a Sunday article that a potentially major fight is shaping up in the Legislature over the issue of grocery store sales with lobbyists advocating it on one side and the independent retailers opposing it on the other. He says a bill has not yet been introduced but quotes a lobbyist as saying one will be.
To paraphrase the late N.S. “Soggy” Sweat Jr.’s classic 1952 speech coming down on both sides of the whiskey issue:
“If when you say let the grocery stores openly sell wine in the presence of little children, making it more available and easily accessible to all, thereby increasing alcohol consumption; if you say let those big chains whose chief executives live in other states take meager profits from small business owners who struggle to make ends meet while adhering to the rigid requirements of the state; if you mean further erosion of small neighborhood, locally owned businesses; if you say further degrade the regulations that make alcohol relatively hard to get in Mississippi, then we are against it.”
“But when you say let it be convenient to pick up a bottle of fine wine to pair with delicious food at one stop; when you say let a mother buy wine without leaving her child in the car outside a liquor store; when you say the prices may be a little cheaper for a product that thousands responsibly enjoy and is said to promote good health when consumed in moderation; when you say let the free enterprise system work, then count us for it.”
That, oversimplified, is what this issue is going to boil down to. And that's what lawmakers will have to consider, perhaps over dinner and a glass of wine provided by one side or the other..
