As Congress has less than a year to decide the fate of the hemp beverage industry, there is a lot of buzz about how it will be regulated. Will the alcohol three-tier regulatory system be imposed on it, or will hemp beverages enjoy a freer market than its alcohol compatriot.? WSWA is gearing up its lobbying apparatus to propagandize its role in maintaining the health and safety aspect of an intoxicating product. Many in the hemp community unwittingly welcome a three-tier system as a way of legitimizing hemp products, and there are those in the alcohol field that want hemp to play in the same sandbox as them, so hemp does not gain an advantage.

Presently, hemp infused products have a free market with very few restrictions, there are some wholesaler control states like Tennessee that mandates a three-tier system for hemp but that is an outlier versus the norm. Hemp products can ship dtc without limits and there is no mandatory wholesaler requirement for a supplier to sell to a retailer. Problematically, there are no age restrictions, which allows the unscrupulous merchant to sell to minors.

The goal for some is for hemp to come under the auspices of a three-tier system and become regulated like alcohol. For some in the alcohol field, hemp should live by the same rules and incur the same expenses. This goes under the misery loves company theory.

But making another one miserable should not be the goal of the alcohol industry. The goal of the industry should shift to what the hemp beverage system shows us.

The wholesaler tier makes the claims that they play an important part in controlling an intoxicating product and helping to maintain the health and safety of society and promoting temperance by keeping prices high. These arguments are really more theoretical than empirical, but greasing palms has a way of making a bad to mediocre argument become gospel.

Several years of deregulated hemp products have gone by and the sky has not fallen in. Unlike wine there are no limits to dtc shipping and many products were delivered safety and soundly directly to a retailer without the control of a wholesaler.

The main safety concern for hemp infused products, no age restrictions, can be cured by passing an over 21 years old consumption law and imposing it on retailers. The wholesaler tier plays absolutely no role in reducing under age consumption, as it to does not age verify anyone at a retailer location.

Instead of allowing a free market to run, some in the liquor industry want hemp put into the same chains as them. This view is short sighted and harmful to the industry.

Allowing hemp infused beverages to operate in a free market without societal problems would provide empirical evidence that the three-tier system is not a necessity for a well-regulated market. By calling for hemp beverages to become part of the three-tier system, the liquor industry only enables a stronger and more powerful middle tier.

The puzzling position also hurts alcohol producers down the line. We hear how wholesaler contraction is hurting small producers and there is a bottleneck where there are not enough wholesalers to service the growing producer portfolio.

Well what do you think will happen if hemp infused products are forced en masse into the middle tier. There will be more products and a new fashionable line of products for small liquor producers to compete with. It will only lead to a reduction of alcohol suppliers down the road.

In concluding, alcohol producers live with the three-tier system as a relic from times past, but spreading their misery to other fields will only deepen their abyss. The proper way out is to allow markets around it to go free and maybe one day it will lead to their liberation.