More Insanity from the DC Super Nanny
Over at To the People, blogger Leonardo has run into yet another worthless law compliments of the DC Super Nanny - aka the DC City Council.
From To the People:
Last week I was in California and bought four bottles of wine to be shipped home. En route home I got this email:
When you placed your order last Sunday for a total of 4 bottles to ship to Washington DC, I didn't realize at the time that DC has a shipping restriction whereby we can only ship 1 bottle per month to an address. Therefore, we cannot ship your order from Ridge.
Yes my friends, this is what your taxpayer dollars are funding - the DC Super Nanny. No wonder they feel the need to sit on an extra $1.4 billion in taxpayer dollars - you never know when Super Nanny will need an extra stash of cash to confront pressing issues of the day like the shipment of wine.
posted by ChrisBarronDC at 8:04 AM
10 Comments:
Seems like a pretty common-sense policy to me, but I'm sure you want your kids buying mail-order booze. If you did some research, you'd find DC is rather typical in having restrictions on shipping wine. In that quintessential Nanny-state of Kentucky, it's actually a felony to ship any alcohol.
http://wi.shipcompliant.com/Home.aspx?SaleTypeID=1
So you think some kid is going to order booze through the mail and have it shipped to their house? Why not just hang out near liquor stores and offer to buy the local disabled Vietnam vet a case of Bud if he picks something up inside for you, too? At least that's what I did at that age, although I felt bad about asking a guy in a wheelchair to roll back to my car with about 40 pounds of beer.
Seriously - this law is retarded. Why penalize legal-age wine enthusiasts on the off chance you prevent the odd teenager here and there from getting a buzz. Holy cow.
It's not even about drinking age, though. It's about taxes. Think about it. If you buy liquor from outside DC, you don't pay the DC sin tax. It's the same in many states.
Hell, Pennsylvania posts state troopers near the Delaware state line, because so many PA residents prefer the lower cost of DE liquor. But it's illegal to shio liquor across most state lines.
It sucks, and it's lame. I think it would make more sense for DC, PA, etc. just to ask us to pay their stupid state tax. I would.
This doesn't really jive with my experience. I've been a regular shopper at wine.woot, where (in the bureaucratic nanny mess) residents of many states are routinely prohibited from ordering wine. DC has never made that list. I've ordered cases, sold/shipped by distributors in CA to DC with zero issue. Further, as per wine.com, DC has no wine shipment restrictions. There are finer points, but this is the gist.
That sucks. Ridge makes some really nice Zinfandels. (Oh, BTW, I got here through Wonkette)
Next time you visit CA, just buy a $10 styrofoam/cardboard shipping box from Beverages and More (BevMo), fill it with whatever wine you want, and check it as luggage when you leave. No one at SFO (or any of the other airports I've ever flown through) gives a damn - and if anyone asks, tell them it's olive oil (be straight with the SFO guys, though, they'll be nice and put "fragile" stickers all over the box). I once shipped 5 cases of wine to NJ this way. Good luck!
While I agree that the DC Council is a little overly forward in telling us to finish our vegetables before we get dessert, my experience is the same as Mark's. I've had four bottles of port delivered to me at home, and two cases (24 bottles) delivered to me at work. I live in NW and work in SE.
As far as having your kids receive wine, it's not a big deal as shippers are required to have alcohol deliveries signed for by an adult, and the delivery can't be completed if the adult is intoxicated at the time of receipt.
Incidentally, the four bottles came from California and the two cases came from New Jersey, from two completely unrelated sources - the CA order was shipped by the vineyard and the NJ order was shipped by a wine retailer.
Your friend probably should've taken it up with the shipper and forced the point.
You shuld contact them again as they obviously have the WRONG information and direct them to wine.com as to shipping restrictions. There is NO world shortage of assholes- I just can't find a way to convert them into fuel...
I have been to about a dozen CA wineries in the past month and they all said the same thing about not being able to ship more than one bottle to me. The rule appears to be new, as they say they used to be able to ship. One winery owner said to me that they have a policy of never shipping to DC because its laws change so frequently they got tired of keeping track of them.
Others might have different experiences but mine was consistent-- and the vineyards certainly have no incentive to not sell me wine.
I did some more research on the issue and here is what I found: DC has different rules for direct (winery) shipping than it does for retail (e.g. wine.com) shipping. The statute limits wineries to one quart (despite the fact that wine comes in liter bottles, duh) per customer per month. The link is here:
http://wi.shipcompliant.com/StateDetail.aspx?StateID=41
Leonardo, thanks for the update and thanks for providing the story that ended up driving so many folks to my little blog.
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