ALL-CAPS OUTRAGE (Gwen Moritz Editor’s Note)

Last week, Managing Editor Jan Cottingham produced a straightforward story about the Arkansas Alcoholic Beverage Control Division’s plan of action if a majority of voters approve Issue No. 4 on the Nov. 4 ballot, the Arkansas Alcoholic Beverage Amendment that will do away with dry counties in Arkansas.

ABC Director Michael Langley predicted some predictable things. He expects a new limit on the number of package stores permitted in each county — probably something like one for every 7,500 residents, rather than the current 5,000. He also expects legislators to expand the buffer zones between liquor retailers and churches and schools.

But he doesn’t expect any change to the current law that limits package store owners to one license. Chain ownership and the like — “I think that is a nonstarter,” Langley said.

So the chief regulator of alcohol sales in the state says, in effect, that newly wet counties would be just like the currently wet counties, only a little less so.

After Cottingham’s story was posted on our website, ArkansasBusiness.com, a reader using the pseudonym “Relatively Conservative” posted a lengthy comment breathlessly insisting that the amendment would make it illegal to regulate alcohol in Arkansas at all.

“News Flash: This is a CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT being proposed,” Relatively Conservative wrote, “and it says ‘effective July 1, 2015, the manufacture, sale, distribution and transportation of intoxicating liquors is lawful within the entire geographic area of each and every county of this state …’”

To our guest commentator, “this proposed amendment explicitly states that it can be sold ANYWHERE (no buffer zones, no zoning restrictions). Oh yeah, and it can be MANUFACTURED there as well. Live in a nice house in a subdivision? Your next door neighbor can turn his house into a manufacturing or distribution hub for alcohol because the state Constitution will explicitly say he can.”

I tried to give RC some very good news.

“Relatively Conservative,” I wrote in reply, “you quote some of the language of the amendment but left out a pretty important chunk: ‘that the manufacture, sale, distribution and transportation of intoxicating liquors may be regulated, but not prohibited, by the General Assembly … .’ So if the amendment passes, alcohol sales can and will be regulated in newly wet counties just as in those that are currently wet, and that includes buffer zones, zoning restrictions, limits on the number of liquor licenses, etc. I hope reading the entire amendment will help you calm down. I hate that you have been led into unnecessary ALL CAPS outrage and that you are spreading inaccurate information.”

Of course, he (or she — who knows?) was undaunted and doubled down on the caps-lock key:

“It may be REGULATED, BUT NOT PROHIBITED. So, the general assembly can NOT put buffer zones in place because that would be a ‘prohibition’ based on geography, not a ‘regulation.’ … The amendment expressly declares that all laws in conflict with it (which would include buffer zones and zoning ordinances) would be repealed. I hope that reading the entire amendment will fire you up, because no judge could read this amendment and think buffer zones remain constitutional and legal.”

Heavy sigh.

My position has always been that voters should have a reasonable opportunity to decide the wet-dry question. I would prefer that they be able to decide it on a county-by-county basis, but the liquor store owners, through their friends in the Legislature, made it unreasonably difficult and expensive to get county-specific referendums on the ballot. So now we’ll get a statewide vote instead.

I don’t care how you vote on Issue No. 4. The outcome won’t affect me in the least. But I do care deeply about people understanding what they are voting for or against, and the idea that alcohol sales will be unregulated is simply incorrect. And no amount of capital letters will make it so.

Gwen Moritz is editor of Arkansas Business. Email her at GMoritz@ABPG.com.