PENNSYLVANIA HAS MADE IT BOTH DIFFICULT AND DANGEROUS TO BUY LIQUOR:

The state’s response during the COVID-19 pandemic provides both an unfortunate reminder of the folly of giving the state government a near-monopoly over liquor sales—and an object lesson in how the closure of businesses in the name of public health can backfire.

The shuttering of Pennsylvania’s state-run stores meant that for weeks, it was nearly impossible to buy liquor legally within state borders. Only in-state distilleries licensed for direct consumer sales were able to sell spirits.

“By closing all the stores, what they are doing is forcing a lot of people to simply go out of state,” says David Ozgo, the Senior Vice President of Economic & Strategic Analysis for DISCUS, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. Ozgo notes that while other states also own and operate liquor stores, Pennsylvania is “the only state in the country that has taken this extreme measure.”

That didn’t just make it harder for Pennsylvanians to buy liquor. It also made it unusually dangerous, as the experience of liquor retailers across the border in New Jersey shows. As Matt Dogali, the president and CEO of the American Distilled Spirits Alliance, told me, “It’s counter to [COVID-19–related] containment measures to force people to travel long distances to crowded stores.”

The entire world is having a rerun of the 1919 Spanish Flu pandemic; Harrisburg piles on with a flashback to 1919’s Volstead Act.