Pennsylvanians Can’t Buy Beer and Wine at the Grocery Store Because ‘It Only Takes a Little Bit of Greed to Kill a Child’

Residents of most states
take for granted the ability to buy beer and wine at the grocery
store. That has been possible in every state where I’ve lived, with
the exception of the one where I was born: Pennsylvania, where
packaged wine and distilled spirits can be purchased only from a
state monopoly and beer can be purchased only from distributors (if
you are willing to buy a whole case) or in bars and restaurants (a
loophole that some grocery stores, with clearance from the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court, have used
to sell their customers beer). An anti-privatization ad sponsored by the
UFCW, which represents employees of the state liquor monopoly,
portrays this bizarre situation as perfectly natural, faulting
“Harrisburg politicians” who “want to give big companies the
right to sell beer and wine in supermarkets, big box
stores, even gas stations.” The union puts its anti-privatization
propaganda into the mouths of two mothers sitting on a park bench
at a playground. The best moment may be when a little girl scampers
over to her mother and climbs onto her lap, whereupon the woman
observes that “it only takes a little bit of greed to kill a
child,” then shakes her head sorrowfully. If you watch only one
accidentally comical political commercial this week, it should be

this one.

How does Mom No. 1 know that “the same kind of law in North
Carolina is killing one child every week”? According to
the story cited in
the ad, that is the average number of minors killed by “underage
drinking-related accidents” in North Carolina each week.
Clearly, privatization is to blame—if you assume that no one under
21 drinks in states with liquor monopolies. Given the motivation
for the ad, which is aimed at preserving phony-baloney jobs, Mom
No. 2 is on firmer ground when she remarks that “it’s about greed,
pure and simple.”

Another UFCW ad (below)
is more despicable than comical, showing a little girl laying a
flower on her father’s coffin as she reflects on how “a drunk
driver took your life and changed mine forever.” The narrator urges
viewers to “tell your state senator to say no to liquor
privatization,” because “we don’t want other children to lose their
parents.”