File Not Found, Information Doesn't Exist

Go to the beer wholesalers' "Protect Our Communities Economic Rents" campaign website "Get The Facts" page and click on the link to a PDF file titled "Public Health Concerns with 1100 and 1105". Your browser will return a "404 File Not Found" error message. Heh.

Snarkiness aside, this illustrates a serious point. The so-called "Public Health Concerns" about I-1100 are little more than scaremongering fabricated by the beer wholesalers and others who are trying to protect the revenue that they would lose in a fair consumer-centered marketplace. There is no credible evidence that the state liquor stores achieve any of their purported public health and safety claims. 

Our friends in the substance abuse prevention and treatment community would do well to stop spending their valuable time and resources fighting I-1100, which has no reasonably foreseeable negative impacts on alcohol abuse (not foreseeable on the basis of empirical evidence, anyway). They should instead focus their efforts on measures that actually are effective at reducing alcohol abuse and its harmful consequences. Among the effective measures are enforcement of underage drinking and DUI laws. We remind those whose concerns about alcohol abuse we share, that alone among the three present alternatives (status quo, I-1100, I-1105), I-1100 is the only option which focuses the Liquor Control Board solely on reducing abusive and underage drinking, and also increases its budget for doing so.