Kentucky: Is Kentucky ready for alcohol deliveries to the front door?

Source: WAVE 3

August 30th 2016

If the Commonwealth distills it or California chills, odds are that Red Dot Liquor, Wine & Spirits stocks and sells it.

But Jerome Quincy can’t deliver it to your door.

“It would generate more business” he said. “We have people that aren’t able to get out as often as they’d like to, and I think that would help them as far as transportation-wise.”

The irony behind Kentucky’s ban on booze-to-your door may help explain it: NASCAR, racing of modified stock cars, began with moonshine runners and bootleggers souping up their wheels to stay a few miles ahead of the law.

“I’ve often advocated for relaxed regulation of shipments to and from Kentucky.,” Representative David Osborne (R) from Prospect, said Tuesday.

The General Assembly’s Interim Joint Committee on Licensing & Occupations heard a presentation from drizly.com, an online and telephone app that serves as a ‘matchmaker’ between customers and package retailers in states that allow home deliveries of alcohol.

“We are not going to get in the game of interstate, quite frankly of crossing counties that are wet and dry,” Drizly CEO Nick Rellas told lawmakers.

“I would think the situation of bootlegging would always come in,” Quincy told WAVE 3 News. “There’s the potential for a lot of illegal transactions being made, selling to minors.”

Drizly has built in some safeguards, Bellas said, including address and ID verification.

“Changing the delivery law would allow us to work within all the rest of the laws,” he assured lawmakers.

“The laws of the free market will sort a lot of things out,” Senator Joe Bowen (R), from Owensboro told the panel. “I believe they will in this case.”

No bill has been pre-filed, but Osborne believes supporters can make a case for ‘fundamental fairness’ after a package of reforms passed in the 2016 Regular Session allowed ‘craft’ breweries to double their production while maintaining their special regulatory status. The reforms also enabled distilleries in dry or moist counties to petition for ‘wet’ elections by precinct to enable them to offer samples or sell smaller packages of their product.

“I would be reluctant to see this move forward, ” Osborne said, “without a more inclusive conversation in other avenues as well.”