While Underage Drinking May Be A Problem, I’m Pretty Darn Sure This Has Nothing To Do With Influencing It
[guest post by Dana]
Good morning! Let’s talk about beer! After all, even President Obama has been known to chug with breakfast:
New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan is facing push back for momentarily losing sight of her state’s motto: Live Free Or Die.
At issue: State representative and bar owner Keith Murphy, R-NH, wanted to sell Founders Breakfast Stout at his place of business. However, given that the Founders Breakfast Stout label features an old-fashioned rendering of a toddler and that it’s illegal in New Hampshire to depict minors in alcohol advertising, Murphy was prohibited from selling the product.
In response to the prohibition, Murphy sponsored a bill to remove the restriction from the law, which the legislature passed earlier this year.
Gov. Hassan vetoed the bill because of concerns about underage drinking in her state:
“Substance misuse, including alcohol misuse, continues to be one of the major public health and safety challenges facing us as a state,” Hassan said in her veto message. “Moreover, statistics suggest that New Hampshire has among the highest rates of underage drinking in the country.”
House members expressed their displeasure with Hassan’s decision:
House members disagreed Thursday, hitting the necessary two-thirds threshold to override the veto. The state’s Liquor Commission would have to approve or deny labels under the law.
Senators must also vote on whether to override the veto.
Further:
Murphy said the veto is an overreach and noted that neighboring Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont sell the beer. He also pointed out that a New Hampshire-produced craft beer, Smuttynose Baltic Porter, would have to come off the shelves because its label shows Father Time and a baby.
Here is the Founders Breakfast Stout label shamefully encouraging underage drinking:
Here is the Smuttynose Baltic Porter label also encouraging underage drinking:
–Dana
Good morning.
Dana (86e864) — 6/14/2015 @ 6:53 amHillary would’ve done the exact same thing good for Maggie
she’s doing our dirty work
she’s the only one who cares
happyfeet (831175) — 6/14/2015 @ 7:03 amWhat? Do these leftist idiots wake up in the morning and try and figure out some new “outrage” to f**k us about? I believe when they see themselves in the mirror brushing their teeth they respond with Dorian Grey-like horror and strike out at We, The People.
Power to the people!
Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie (f4eb27) — 6/14/2015 @ 7:11 amI’ve been known to have a breakfast beer. Also a Knob Creek breakfast bourbon. What? Mimosa’s are for girls. Now I’m in trouble!
Amen!
Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie (f4eb27) — 6/14/2015 @ 7:14 amOf course, if one really wanted to do something intelligent about “underage” drinking, one could sh*tcan the laws that make an 18 year old, who can vote and is living away from home at college, an “underage” drinker. Because it’s, you know, f*cking idiotic that a guy can be required to register for the draft and not get a beer.
I swear; the whole boiling of handwringing prohibitionists make me ashamed to be a teetotaler. I don’t drink because I have gout, and if you asked be if I’d rather have a gout attack or a swift kick in the junk, I’d have to think about it. But I hate that not wanting feet that throb with searing agony gives me anything in common with these interfering, self-important asshats.
C. S. P. Schofield (a196fd) — 6/14/2015 @ 7:24 amI have zero doubt that the crusaders against underage drinking end up doing more to promote abusive and excessive underage drinking than anyone or anything else. Binge drinking, for example, is a vastly greater problem on college campuses now than it was when I was in college — and the legal drinking age was 18 — in the 1970s.
Beldar (fa637a) — 6/14/2015 @ 7:28 amThe underage drinking is a problem because of these laws. When I and most of my friends were growing up in the 1940s, we were introduced to alcohol by our parents. At parties and holidays, we would be given a small glass of beer or watered wine to drink with our meal. To have a drink was never an act of rebellion against our parents or society. Result : none of us abused alcohol either as children or adults.
Michael Keohane (414173) — 6/14/2015 @ 7:40 amDo these leftist idiots wake up in the morning and try and figure out some new “outrage” to f**k us about?
The left is more commonly outraged about cigarettes, tobacco and second-hand smoke. However, as with the case of same-sex marriage, more and more Americans of all ideological stripes are becoming typical, garden-variety sheeple and accepting the conventional wisdom handed down by the nanny state, by liberal judges, by liberal or Republican-lite legislators.
In keeping with this, the drudgereport had a link the other day to an article about a person mischievously circulating an on-the-street petition. That individual asked the public (but reportedly mainly liberals, mainly Obama supporters) whether they’d sign a petition that supported the US dropping an atomic bomb on Russia. The petitioner found many of those he approached agreeing to put their name to his paperwork.
Baa, baa.
Squish, squish.
Mark (a11af2) — 6/14/2015 @ 8:18 amI think that’s old hat now, Mark. They’ve managed to make almost the entire country, inside and out, smoke free. God bless their little Nazi hearts, they think just like Adolf did. But I do agree both the left and right throw out a bunch of “truisms” that are just accepted and repeated as if they are actual fact. I heard n ad today by Wal-Mart where they stated they were giving raises to their employees because (announcers words) “when someone gates a raise we all get a raise”. Really? We all know that the only person getting a raise is the one getting a rise. Wal-Mart looses and ultimately the customer does to pay for the raise. So why would a good “free-market” company make such an obvious, pandering, lying statement and expect it to be accepted as fact? Maybe because the leftist have spent 6 decades spouting off non-truths they’ve never been held accountable for How about the population explosion, alar, DDT, the ice age, ….should we continue with the steady stream of “settled science” that all turn out to be lies? It’s just like their ruinous social programs. No matter how much harm they do over any amount of time they never consider ending or replacing them, only expanding them with the needed “more investment”.
Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie (f4eb27) — 6/14/2015 @ 8:32 amIt’s surprising that a company finds it easier (and presumably, cheaper) to lobby to change the law than it is to change their logo.
I remember when buying a legislator, even a state legislator, required a serious investment.
egd (1ad898) — 6/14/2015 @ 8:32 amAlong that same thought Mark, I was watching the ads for the democrats run for mayor of Philly. There is only one party here, democrat. It’s like living in Soviet Russia. Anyway, their main central theme was how bad the hilly schools were and each ranted about how the school system is both broken and broke” and how each of them could fix this “failed education system.
The democrats have run Philly 100% since 1952. The school system like every other corrupt labor union controlled section of this city is exactly what they’ve made it. So now these idiot democrats get on TV and want the voters to elect them to fix hat they broke! And these idiots will do it every time because they are ignorant democrat LIV. What can we do? I moved to the burbs.
Free at Last!
Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie (f4eb27) — 6/14/2015 @ 8:39 am… but Union Teachers raping our HS kids is ok. Sex Ed.
Rodney King's Spirit (b31520) — 6/14/2015 @ 8:54 amGreetings:
I think that that “Father Time” label is dangerously close to encouraging something a lot worse than underage alcohol consumption.
11B40 (0f96be) — 6/14/2015 @ 8:56 amIf you are enraged by underage drinking, cigarettes, GMO’s, trans-fat, super-size value meals, and super big gulps, but think marijuana should be legal, you might be a liberal.
Edoc118 (ffe670) — 6/14/2015 @ 9:25 amGiven all the problems on campus with drunken women awaking up in strange places and assuming they must have been raped, the female drinking age ought to be about 25.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 6/14/2015 @ 9:49 amThis is the description of the SmuttyRose Baltic Porter beer from a reviewer:
It is a seasonal offering and this is how the brewer describes it:
Yes. This sounds exactly like the kind of brew that would appeal to furtive under-age drinkers looking for a quick, cheap buzz with their buddies./sarc.
egd@10–No problemo! No outside lobbyist required! This is politics! According to The Union Leader HB 122 which would ease state restrictions on the use of juvenile images on beer or alcohol bottles, was sponsored by Rep. Keith Murphy, R-Bedford, owner of Murphy’s Taproom in Manchester.
elissa (4e362a) — 6/14/2015 @ 10:20 amI just think about all the man hours burned up, and for what? An absolutely inconsequential beer label. This is what we’ve become. And this is how it all ends. See: Empire, Roman, Holy.
Gazzer (be559b) — 6/14/2015 @ 10:23 am“Given all the problems on campus with drunken women awaking up in strange places and assuming they must have been raped, the female drinking age ought to be about 25.”
Oh, if we’re going to make emotional maturity the benchmark, then what we should do is say you can’t drink until you are no longer a registered Democrat.
C. S. P. Schofield (a196fd) — 6/14/2015 @ 10:49 amI didn’t say a thing about emotional maturity, it’s just that after 25 you probably aren’t in college anymore.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 6/14/2015 @ 12:31 pmThis sounds exactly like the kind of brew that would appeal to furtive under-age drinkers looking for a quick, cheap buzz with their buddies.
Funny. The thing about under-age drinking is, you don’t give a rip about brands, let alone labels. You snag whatever your parents might have around the house that they might not notice when it’s missing, or whatever your friends can lift from their parents. In high school, some kids at parties used to bring booze in containers that they had poured from the homes they were babysitting in. And, if you hit up a young adult to make a purchase, it was whatever was cheapest.
For the life of me, I cannot remember one straight-laced kid in high school who looked at a beer bottle label and out of the blue said, “Oh, wow, look at that label. Makes me want to drink. Let’s party!”. Did not happen.
Dana (86e864) — 6/14/2015 @ 12:48 pm“It’s surprising that a company finds it easier (and presumably, cheaper) to lobby to change the law than it is to change their
logobehavior.”FTFY!
felipe (56556d) — 6/14/2015 @ 1:14 pm“after 25 you probably aren’t
ingetting a lot out of college anymore.”You’re welcome.
felipe (56556d) — 6/14/2015 @ 1:25 pmThis isn’t the first time that government has hassled a brewer over a label. In the 1990s I was reading a usnet group called alt-beer or something similar when everyone began to discuss the harassment that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms was heaping on Grant’s Brewery of Yakima, WA. For those of you who were drinking craft beer in its nascent days you may recall what a truly excellent brewery Grant’s was. It’s apparently now known as Yakima Brewing, and I couldn’t tell you about the quality of beer any longer since I assume they only distribute regionally.
In any case, a pretty good summary of the controversy can be found here (warning: this is from what appears to be a hyper-libertarian site so be ready for government agents to casually be compared to Nazis). Bert Grant, the late owner of the brewery, had appeared on the alt-beer usnet site to tell us his impressions of what was happening, and the description here sounds pretty similar to what he reported. I met him at a brewing festival a year or so later and he was a very pleasant man who seemed to have completely lost faith in the fairness of the U.S. government.
JVW (8278a3) — 6/14/2015 @ 2:58 pmJust tell them the picture’s not a kid, its W C Fields.
I’m glad though NH has solved all their other problems and can now dedicate all their spare time to beer labels.
“Everything within the state, nothing outside the state.”
patricia (5fc097) — 6/14/2015 @ 9:02 pm“Live Free Or Die”. I sure hope New Hampshire’s license plates are not made in prisons.
And Maggie sounds like a really bossy broad. What do you guys think?
nk (dbc370) — 6/14/2015 @ 9:08 pmIf you look at it, between it’s high water mark say around the time of Aurelius and when it was finally sacked by Alaric, Rome put up a better fight than we are putting up.
Steve57 (48418e) — 6/14/2015 @ 9:17 pmWhat do you guys think?
Seriously, nk? You really want to go with “you guys”??
Dana (86e864) — 6/14/2015 @ 9:33 pmWe don’t need to do it anymore? https://patterico.com/2015/06/12/saying-you-guys-is-sexist-you-guys/ Nobody tells me anything.
nk (dbc370) — 6/14/2015 @ 10:08 pmRome put up a better fight than we are putting up.
I was reading a description the other day about the way that many people live in Mexico City, with all the backwardness, poverty, low standing, indefinite misery. I shudder because if the US at its height was like Rome in all its glory, then the US in the future will be like Mexico in all its raunchiness.
America, speeding down that road paved with good intentions, with people like Obama at the wheel.
Mark (a11af2) — 6/14/2015 @ 10:09 pmAlthough I still love the full-throat taste of, say a Summit Grand(St Paul, Mn), or a Talbot cab(St Julien, Fr) I’ve lost appreciation of the ‘high’.
DNF (208255) — 6/15/2015 @ 5:37 amObama drinks Lite Beer.
Scott Severin (cf3950) — 6/16/2015 @ 7:02 pm