Imagine you hand-crafted something. It was so special, people actually would visit you to watch you make it. But when they wanted to buy it, you weren’t allowed to sell them your hand crafted product, because the state government had declared a monopoly on selling the product you made.

That’s exactly the situation Chapel Hill’s own Top Of The Hill restaurant and brewery faces. A while back, they added a distillery, hand-crafting vodka, gin and whiskey from locally sourced ingredients. Topo distillery, as they call it, is part of a tiny new micro-distillery movement in North Carolina. You can even take a tour of Topo and many similar small distilleries around the state.

However, if you want to take home a bottle at the end of your tour? Sorry, you’re out of luck. That’s because state law currently forbids any spirits sales that aren’t at a government-owned ABC store, even by the distiller themselves.

Right now, there’s a bill before the North Carolina legislature to fix this problem. It would allow local micro-distilleries to sell just one bottle just once a year to a person who tours their distillery. House representative Verla Insko and State Senator Valarie Foushee from our area are co-sponsors. Republican Senator Rick Gunn from Alamance County is a sponsor.  He calls it “a very restrictive way to promote a new and growing business in our state” and “a logical step to give these entrepreneurs.”

With such strong bipartisan support, who could be against it?

Local ABC boards, that’s who. They defeated a similar bill last session, and they’re dead set on defeating it this session, too.

In North Carolina, the state’s ABC commission owns the retail stores, decides which products they can carry, and sets the price for each product. (Didn’t America used to call that style of central economic planning Communism?) Those stores are overseen by local ABC boards that are, for all intents and purposes, self-governing entities. They’re not subject to similar standards of state ethics oversight as other agencies. Unlike private retailers, they don’t even have to make a profit, and in some counties, they don’t.

With this background in mind, guess what the lobbyist for those ABC boards said of the bill to allow local distillers to sell one commemorative bottle of their own product once a year to a patron who tours their distillery? “We have a control system for the sale of spirituous liquors that’s worked well over the years.” “It’s one bottle now – what does it become next year?”

For whom, exactly, is our ABC system working well? It’s not working well for our state’s micro-distillers who are banned from selling the fruits of their own labor. It’s certainly not working well for craft cocktail connoisseurs who often can’t find their favorite products at government-owned ABC stores. It’s not working well to curb the very real problems of alcohol abuse and underage drinking.

It’s not even working in the best interest of our state’s budget: Back in 2009, the North Carolina governor’s budget office estimated that privatizing the ABC system could bring the state as much as $200 million in cash. That $200 million dollars sure could pay a lot of teachers across the state or help with economic development in our struggling rural communities.

Seems to me the only folks for whom our alcoholic beverage control system has “worked well for years” are the political appointees to those ABC boards.

The only real argument against privatizing the ABC system is the loss of revenue to local areas. However, that problem is easy to fix: Let each county set their own sales tax on spirits. Compared to property taxes, giving counties control of liquor sales tax would be an easy tax for cash strapped counties to raise. After all, despite what I tell my wife after a hard day at the office, I don’t actually “need” a Martini.

With so many logical reasons to get out of the liquor retailing business, why is our government so eager to privatize everything else but liquor retailing?

I realize we have far bigger problems in our state than where we buy our bourbon. But it seems to me that when the ABC system won’t give up even one single sale of a bottle of liquor once a year, even they know abolishing their government monopoly is truly in the best interest of our state.

While it might be years before North Carolina finally sees the light on privatizing spirits sales, I hope this legislative session we can at least give Topo distillery back their one bottle a year.