Distributors vs. Craft Beer/Consumers...it's about to go down...

If you haven’t been paying attention to the fight that’s been happening here in MD, you need to wake up and pay attention.

A politician (allegedly backed by distributors) in a nearby county is filing to strip our state Comptroller of his authority over road use fuels, tobacco, and alcohol.

Franchot has done much to try and improve things for the craft beverage industry. It was expected that the distributors would try and make a move this session, but this isn’t what I expected. From what I can tell, it’s pretty much a move directly in response to Franchot’s attempts to reform craft beer laws in our state.

Hopefully this doesn’t count as political…it is, but it’s craft beer related. I’m honestly surprised that the BA hasn’t been more involved in all this, thankfully the Brewer’s Association of MD has also stepped up to get word out. throughout this whole mess.

Oh yeah, and all this comes at the start of MD’s official craft beer month…what a way to support the brewing industry here…

Maybe they don’t know. Not sure how that could happen but maybe send them the information. Pete Johnson serves as the State & Regulatory Affairs Manager for the Brewers Association.

Pretty incredible what some are able to get away with. A company I worked at before had a conflict of interest with a guy in charge of picking vendors. His brother, coincidentally, had a machine shop that got a lot of our business… There’s no room anywhere for this kind of stuff.

I wonder what ‘contraband beer’ tastes like.

The weird thing about it, although it’s not too uncommon these days, that they want to strip a certain power from someone, but then who’s going to do it? Who is going to control the tax money other than the comptroller? My mom was a CPA which is the only way I even know what a comptroller is but that just seems silly.  There’s no plan or thought for what comes after “You can’t do that”…

The conflict of interest thing doesn’t shock me.  People in power always vote for their own interests no matter how neutral they try to be.

Probably Busch Light… you aren’t gonna spend too much money on stuff you’re gonna smuggle across the border and likely get taken away from you.

To clarify, on state issues facing local craft brewers, the Brewers Association supports positions taken by the state’s brewers guild takes.

The Brewers Association has very strong relations with the Brewers Association of Maryland and we have sent out action alerts to our members at the guild’s behest in the past.  If the guild request support in this case, we’ll be there to help.

Thanks for clarifying that. Likely a better system, but without knowing that it just seemed strange only seeing info from one source.