Bid to Restrict Some Alcohol Sales Fails Again

When Democrats controlled the Assembly, the wine, beer and liquor industry routinely killed efforts to prohibit corner grocery stores from selling high-alcohol “wine” and malt liquors.

This year, Assemblyman Bruce Thompson (R-Fallbrook), who is part of the GOP’s leadership and has taken up the cause, proclaimed that no bill was more important to him than his legislation to halt fortified wine and malt liquor sales in groceries, limiting them to stores with liquor licenses.

“Rapes, beatings of women, murders, car crashes--it all goes back to alcohol,” Thompson said. “If you’re going to stop these kinds of things from happening, you’ve got to start somewhere. This is the perfect place to start--fortified wines and malt liquors, the favorite of the gang members.”

But Thompson discovered that no matter which party controls the lower house, some things don’t change. In a special hearing Monday evening, his bill got only three votes (two Republicans and a Democrat) in the GOP-controlled Assembly Governmental Organization Committee. That was four votes shy of a majority. Ten other members either weren’t at the hearing or abstained, thus killing the bill.

Thompson had backing from police groups, the California Assn. of Alcoholic Beverage Control investigators, the cities of Los Angeles and Pasadena, the League of California Cities and inner-city activists who said the products lead to crime, litter, vandalism, underage drinking and other urban ills.

The assemblyman displayed bottles of fortified wine and beer-related drinks, from Gallo’s Thunderbird to Pabst’s Old English 800, all of which have more alcohol than most naturally fermented wine and beer.

Witnesses called the products the “crack cocaine” of the liquor industry, and said they are favored by winos, gang members and minors, and that areas around groceries that sell them often are high in crime.

“We are seeing a massive increase in the purchase of fortified products by young people, in particular malt liquors,” said Dean Rewarts, a lobbyist representing Alcoholic Beverage Control investigators. “When you ask kids why, they say it’s cheap and you get high.”

Thompson’s bill (AB 2799) would have permitted groceries with licenses to sell regular beer and wine to continue selling beer and wine. But only stores with liquor licenses would have been able to sell fortified wine and malt liquor.

Lobbyists for Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc. and Miller Brewing Co., the country’s two largest brewers, testified that 1% or less of their products would be affected by the bill.

But those breweries, as well as representatives from microbreweries, the Wine Institute and the Distilled Spirits Council, opposed the measure, arguing that the prohibition would not solve the problem and that the bill would limit the sale of fine wine and beers made by microbreweries.

“It’s definitely a free-market issue,” said committee Chairman Bill Hoge (R-Pasadena), who was among the 10 committee members who did not vote on the bill. Hoge said he believes the solution is a new law requiring store clerks to ask for proof of age from everyone who buys alcohol, and tougher penalties for selling alcohol to minors.

In the Republican-controlled Assembly, the Governmental Organization Committee has eight Republicans, four Democrats and one Reform Party member. With the hearing held after 5 p.m., several committee members were at other committee hearings or at appointments away from the Capitol. Only six committee members were in the room for most of the hearing.

“A couple members obviously went home,” Thompson said. Also, given the hour, which was past daily news deadlines, only one news reporter showed up, so the bill’s death received little attention. “That’s a pressure we needed to keep on the committee,” Thompson said.

“Heavens, no,” Hoge said when he was asked if he set the hearing at night in an effort to kill the measure. Given the press of other duties and the time spent on the measure, he said, Monday evening was the only time he could hold the hearing.

When Democrats controlled the lower house, Thompson’s coauthor, Democratic Assemblyman Louis Caldera, whose district includes downtown Los Angeles, carried similar legislation that met the same fate three years ago. Assemblyman Curtis Tucker Jr. (D-Inglewood), who also failed in efforts to get such legislation through, cited the power of the liquor industry’s lobby.

“Inner city problems get ignored, in city hall, the state Capitol, Capitol Hill,” said Tucker, who along with two Republicans voted for Thompson’s measure Monday. “So the community has to expand. People in the suburbs have to start complaining about this.”