Texas alcohol agency reverses judge, preserving state booze industry
In a billion-dollar game of brinksmanship over the state’s booze business, the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission blinked.
Last fall, when an Austin judge issued an opinion he acknowledged could shut down much of the state’s alcoholic beverage industry, he admitted it was ludicrous. But, Robert Jones Jr. explained, he was bound to follow Texas law as it was written — which meant many companies, including such giants as Anheuser-Busch and Molson Coors Brewing, could not legally operate in Texas.
Two weeks ago, however, the agency that regulates alcohol beverages decided that shuttering the state’s booze business was probably not what legislators intended, and reversed the judge’s advisory decision. If it had not, Deputy Executive Director Matthew Chaplin wrote, “it would result in…no legal alcoholic beverage industry in Texas.”
Although a dry-state disaster was averted, the high-stakes game of legal chicken with the $40 billion alcoholic beverage industry is the latest evidence that Texas’s alcoholic beverage rules, many of which have not been updated since the end of Prohibition, are increasingly unworkable. “The greatest challenge is that the Code is not contemporary,” the alcoholic beverage agency wrote late last year in its once-every-ten-year evaluation by the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission. “Business models and services evolve, but the Code does not.”
Read more: https://www.mystatesman.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/texas-alcohol-agency-reverses-judge-preserving-state-booze-industry/BCiTtYLBV5mmsToMAKWFQL/
