Editor’s note: Hello and welcome to Lobby Time, Fingers’ weekly overview of booze-related legislative moves around the country, published exclusively for paid subscribers. If you haven’t yet, buy a subscription now to read this and all my coverage. Also, sorry this edition is a day late, I threw out my back earlier this week. Not sweet, do not recommend.—Dave.
Lobby Time is mostly about the chaotic and mostly graceless interaction of America’s two most important institutions—the booze business and the legislative process. It’s conventional wisdom that the former will always outpace the latter, and semi-conventional wisdom that it should. (After all, there’s no point in trying to make laws about problems that don’t exist, like chemtrails or litter boxes in classrooms, just to pick two examples completely at random.)
Today’s top item is certainly about a market outpacing the laws that govern it, but in a sobering inversion of Lobby Time’s typical format, it’s about the not-booze business, and the not-laws governing it.