While alcohol Prohibition officially ended long ago, nearly 100 years later, many states are still living with the remnants of outdated laws. This includes everything from unnecessarily high taxes and giving monopoly rights to select distributors to crazy laws preventing “sensual” labels, requiring drinks to be mixed behind a “Zion screen” and a requirement that beer be sold only lukewarm.
It would be one thing if these laws had a positive effect on society, but research suggests that they don’t. Most of the time, strict alcohol control regimes mean higher prices without necessarily cutting down on alcohol-attributable deaths or other negative social outcomes.
Join the Mackinac Center for Public Policy at a virtual event on Tuesday, October 20 to learn about some of the laws on the books nationally and in Michigan and what reforms should be made to change them.
We will open with remarks by Mackinac Center President Joseph Lehman, followed by our featured speakers Jarrett Dieterle, author of Give Me Liberty and Give Me a Drink, and Mackinac Center Senior Director of Fiscal Policy Michael LaFaive.
As part of this event, we will be giving away five free copies of Give Me Liberty and Give Me a Drink! We will choose five names at random from among all attendees who are on the call at the close of the event. Thank you again, and we hope to see your RSVP soon. To RSVP and receive access to the forum, please register below.
Tuesday, October 20, 2020
11:00 a.m. to Noon EDT
Online virtual program
To join, please RSVP
Call our Events office at
Registration is closed.
C. Jarrett Dieterle is the Director of Commercial Freedom and a Senior Fellow at the R Street Institute think tank in Washington, D.C. Among other topics, he specializes in alcohol policy and is the editor of DrinksReform.org, a website and newsletter dedicated to tracking and analyzing alcohol reform efforts across the country. He has written about alcohol and other regulatory issues for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Washington Post, as well as dozens of regional outlets. He's a Michigan native who currently lives in Richmond, VA.
Michael LaFaive is senior director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. He is the co-author of the Mackinac Center study, “Alcohol Control Reform and Public Health and Safety,” and recent works on “to-go” drinks and the monopoly profits of Michigan’s beer and wine wholesalers. In 2014 he led a Mackinac Center request of the Michigan Liquor Control Commission to eliminate the state’s “post and hold” rules for beer and wine, which research shows may artificially hike the cost of those products in Michigan.
An engineer by training, Joseph G. Lehman joined the Mackinac Center in 1995 and was named president in 2008. During his tenure Michigan has seen numerous free-market policy advances in education, labor and state fiscal affairs. Frequently published in national and state media, Lehman also has trained more than 600 public policy executives internationally on strategic leadership and communications. He and his wife are founders of Midland County Habitat for Humanity.
