Politicians Make Bootlegging Great Again: New at Reason

Prohibition may be over, but high taxes and stupid restrictions on alcohol create plentiful smuggling opportunities.

J.D. Tuccille writes:

When Prohibition ended in 1933, my great-grandfather, Giuseppe Marano, thought his money-making glory days were over. Having made a good living selling alcoholic beverages to willing buyers at a time when that business was illegal across the country, he and his cohorts certainly viewed the passage of the 21st Amendment as the end of a very profitable era.

Except that it really wasn’t. Politicians may have formally dumped the national ban on booze, but in many places they’ve imposed enough foolish restrictions to keep bootlegging a going concern.

On the first day of this year, it became a class 4 felony in Illinois—up from a business offense carrying a fine—to import 45 liters or more of liquor into the state without a license. The same minimum one-year prison sentence applies to bringing in more than 108 liters of wine or 118 liters of beer without government paperwork.

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