Alcohol licensing

“ Any person, firm, association or corporation desiring or intending to manufacture or distill any liquors containing alcohol within this state shall first obtain from the state board of control a permit or license so to do, and it shall be unlawful for any such person, firm, association or corporation to manufacture or distill any liquors containing alcohol within this state without having such permit or license. ”

“ To support the affirmative, the plaintiff in error maintains that alcohol is, in itself, a useful commodity, not necessarily noxious, and is a subject of property; that the very statute under consideration, by various provisions, and especially by those which permit, in express terms, the manufacture of intoxicating liquors for mechanical, medicinal, culinary, or sacramental purposes, recognizes those qualities, and expressly authorizes the manufacture ”

“ This department which began in weakness, and was for years regarded as fanatical even by many members of the W. C. T. U. has entered upon an era of victories. The National Pure Food Law requires the percentage of alcohol in patent medicines, and the presence of different dangerous drugs, to be stated upon the label. The prohibition law of Georgia forbids physicians to prescribe alcoholic beverages, absolute alcohol only being permitted. Kansas has amended her law so that whisky drug-stores are eliminated. If physicians prescribe alcohol the law forbids charge for it. ”

“ In other words, it clearly appears that a liquor law, to be capable of effective enforcement must, in the opinion of the Legislatures and courts of the several states, be made to apply either to all liquors of the species enumerated, like beer, ale or wine, regardless of the presence or degree of alcoholic content; or if a more general description is used, such as distilled, rectified, spirituous, fermented, malt, or brewed liquors, to all liquors within that general description regardless of alcoholic content;b or to such of these liquors as contain a named percentage of alcohol ”

“ Thus to an extent we intrust daily the destinies of an appreciable proportion of our public to a class of men who certainly have done little to earn general confidence. In nearly every State, if not in all, laws exist imposing penalties upon the dealer in alcohol who sells drink to a person who is already in a state of intoxication ”

“ There never has been, never can, and never will be a law enacted that prevent men from drinking liquor, especially those in whom there is a dominant appetite for it. The idea of licensing men to sell liquor and punishing men for drinking it is monstrous. To be sure, they are not punished for drinking it in moderation, but no man can be moderate who has such an appetite as I have. Why license men to sell liquor, and then punish others for drinking it? What sort of sense or justice is there in it, anyhow? There is a double punishment for the drunkard, and none for the liquor-seller. ”

“ There a section of the National Prohibition Act forbidding the sale of denatured alcohol without a compliance with certain regulations was assailed as beyond the authority of Congress under the Eighteenth Amendment upon the ground that the amendment relates only to traffic in intoxicating liquor for beverage purposes, and that, as denatured alcohol is not usable as a beverage, authority to prevent or regulate its sale is not given to Congress by the amendment, but remains exclusively in the states. ”

“ The first section does, indeed, make it penal to manufacture, sell, barter, deliver, store, or keep in possession any spirituous, malt, vinous, fermented, brewed, or other liquors which contain alcohol, and are used as a beverage, and declares all such liquors to be contraband, and against the morals, good health, and safety of the state, and authorizes them to be seized wherever found, without warrant, and turned over to the state commissioner ”

“ The Finance Act of 1902 allows a manufacturer to obtain a license which permits the use of duty-free alcohol, if he can show that such alcohol is absolutely essential for the success of his business, and that methylated spirit is unsuitable. Notwithstanding this permission there have been many agitations on the part of chemical manufacturers to obtain a less restricted use of absolute alcohol, and in 1905 an Industrial Alcohol Committee was appointed to receive evidence and report as to whether any modification of the present law was advisable. ”

“ Going from matters merely unwholesome to actual poisons, the course of legislation on intoxicating liquors is too familiar to the reader to make it necessary to more than refer to it, with the general observation that in the North and East the tendency has been toward high licensing or careful regulation, always with local option ”

“ Next follow regulations for the sale of denatured alcohol, if any one ventures into the precarious business of making it, undaunted by the legal pitfalls and penalties provided. 'Manufacturers of and dealers in beverages of any kind' are not permitted to keep nor store denatured alcohol; they are in danger of the strong arm of the law if they so much as have a light green cask with red letters on it in their possession. ”

“ The Brooks Law, as construed by the courts of the state. prohibits every sale of spirituous liquor without a license, excepting only such sales as are made by druggists, and these are forbidden to sell intoxicating liquors except on prescription of a regular physician. The law applies, however small the percentage of alcohol, and although the liquor is not intoxicating. ”

“ If there was never another ounce of alcohol manufactured, the world would be none the loser either medicinally or commercially. My reason for making this statement is that prohibition of the sale of alcoholic beverages has been largely defeated because there have not been the proper safeguards thrown about the manufacture and sale of drug-store concoctions that can be had in any quantity as substitutes for alcoholic stimulants ”

“ And yet we are told that licensing the saloons is a bad business investment; that it costs more than it comes to; that the way to abolish poverty is to abrogate the liquor license law. Strange that the Prohibs should possess such transcendent business heads and such empty stomachs! Doubtless the drinking of liquor adds to the cost of our judiciary; doubtless it is responsible for some crime; but the question at issue is not one of liquor-drinking vs. teetotalism—it is a question of drinking licensed liquor or Prohibition aquafortis. ”

“ Every permittee applying for a renewal has the burden of establishing his fitness; whereas, if permits are terminable only by revocation pursuant to the provisions in sections 5 and 9, the burden to justify closing the business because of some violation of the act or of the regulations is put upon the government. But section 6, as well as the rest of the act, draws an obvious distinction between the manufacture, etc., of intoxicating liquor and that of industrial alcohol and the preparations enumerated in section 4. ”

“ Any liquor entered as wine, which contains more than twenty-two per centum of alcohol, whether it is entered as wine generally, or champagne or sparkling wine, is condemned to the use of the United States. The second proviso is, that packages of wines, brandies, or other spirituous liquors, shall contain not less than one dozen bottles in each package, and all such bottles shall pay an additional duty of three cents for each bottle. ”

“ Anyone using de-natured alcohol for the manufacture of any beverage or liquid medicinal preparation, or who knowingly sells any beverage or liquid medicinal preparation made in whole or in part from such alcohol, becomes subject to the penalties prescribed in section 2 of the Act of June 7, 1906. ”

“ No narcotics were found, but hidden in the car were eleven five-gallon cans of alcohol without the tax stamps required by federal law. The brother and the alcohol were turned over to federal authorities and this prosecution followed. ”

“ Common experience has shown that the general and unrestricted use of intoxicating liquors tends to produceidleness, disorder, disease, pauperism, and crime. The power of regulating or prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors appropriately belongs, as a branch of the police power, to the legislatures of the several states, and can be judiciously and effectively exercised by them alone, according to their views of public policy and local needs ”

“ The opinion written by Judge Beck and concurred in by Rothrock and Adams assumes the extraordinary position that inasmuch as the law in expressed terms permitted the manufacture of alcohol within the state for medicinal, mechanical, and sacramental purposes, and did not in terms provide for the manufacture within the state for export, therefore it was prohibited by the law. ”

“ Hence the government takes the position that the seller of intoxicating liquor is required by the statute to keep a permanent record of his sales, whether lawful or unlawful, and that failure to do so is itself a crime, from which it would follow that a conspiracy to effect a sale without such a record is an indictable offense. No question is made but that persons authorized to deal in alcoholic liquors under the Prohibition Act are required to make permanent records of their transactions. ”

“ Under no circumstances will de-naturers, manufacturers, or dealers, or any other persons, in any manner treat either specially or completely de-natured alcohol by adding anything to it or taking anything from it until it is ready for the use for which it is to be employed. It must go [256] into manufacture or consumption in exactly the same condition that it was when it left the de-naturer. Diluting completely de-natured alcohol will be held to be such manipulation as is forbidden by law. ”

“ Alcohol is, on the one hand, a poison; on the other hand, it is the basis of the national drinks of every civilized country. Every state has felt called upon to regulate its sale to more or less extent, in such a way that (1) in the interests of public health alcohol may not be too easily or too cheaply obtainable, that (2) the restraints on its sale may be a source of revenue to the State, and that (3) at the same time this regulation of the sale may not be a vexatious and useless attempt to interfere unduly with national customs. ”

“ The English were notorious for hard drinking for centuries before licensing was adopted, and from time to time sundry efforts had been made to check it, but what eventually compelled the interference of the law was the growth of crime and disorder associated with the public-houses towards the end of the 15th century. ”

“ The seizure and destruction cannot be sustained on the ground that the act in question destroyed the value of the liquor. The question of compensation is not involved. That alcoholic liquors are capable of valuable uses is recognized by the whole mass of state and national regulatory and prohibitory laws, as well as by the state legislation in question. ”

“ By having liquors examined, and only pure liquors sold, and condemned liquors destroyed, precisely as in the case of unclean or impure meats, milk, fruit, and confectionery; much could be practicably, and in a minimum lapse of time, accomplished to the decrease of the liquor evil. The prohibitionists themselves, by placing and replacing and abolishing and experimenting with all sorts of statutes upon the statute-book, have accustomed us to State regulation of the sale of intoxicants, and, least of all, can complain of yet one more experiment toward the decrease of drunkenness. ”

“ To uphold the contention of the government, therefore, the language of section 10 must be taken to apply not only to those who hold government permits authorizing them to deal in intoxicating liquors under a familiar system of regulation, to whom it admittedly is applicable, but to every criminal violator of the National Prohibition Act, even though making only a single, isolated sale. ”

“ Such distinctions are constantly made the basis for licensing one person to sell intoxicating liquors, and denying it to others. The question in each case is whether the establishing of a dairy and cow stable is likely, in the hands of the applicant, to be a nuisance or not to the neighborhood, and to imperil or conduce to the health of its customers. As the dispensing power must be vested in some one, it is not easy to see why it may not properly be delegated to the municipal assembly which enacted the ordinance. ”

“ Our laws license the sale of intoxicating drinks under certain restrictions on week days, but no man can claim the right under such license to cause mobs, riots, bloodshed or murder. Hence no man has, or can have, any right by license or otherwise to dispense liquors to intoxicated persons, nor to furnish sufficient liquor to cause intoxication. ”

“ LIQUOR LAWS. In most Western countries the sale of alcoholic liquor is regulated by law. The original and principal object is to check the evils arising from the immoderate use of such liquor, in the interest of public order, morality and health; a secondary object is to raise revenue from the traffic. The form and the stringency of the laws passed for these purposes vary very widely in different countries according to the habits of the people and the state of public opinion. The evils which it is desired to check are much greater in some countries than in others. ”