Pa. about to liberate the six-pack
HARRISBURG - Gov. Wolf says he will free the six-pack. In a statement Thursday morning, the Democratic governor said he intends to sign a bill passed by the legislature this week to allow beer distributors to sell six-packs, growlers, and even single cans.
HARRISBURG - Gov. Wolf says he will free the six-pack.
In a statement Thursday morning, the Democratic governor said he intends to sign a bill passed by the legislature this week to allow beer distributors to sell six-packs, growlers, and even single cans.
The change is momentous - at least for Pennsylvania, where the system for selling wine, liquor, and beer dates back to the end of Prohibition.
"I have worked hard with Republicans and Democrats in the General Assembly to modernize the sale of liquor, wine, and beer in Pennsylvania in order to bring the commonwealth's wine and spirits system into the 21st century," Wolf said in a statement.
The law will go into effect 60 days after the governor signs it.
Now, distributors can sell only cases, 12-packs, and kegs. Besides expanding their potential offerings, the bill Wolf will sign brings more changes, such as allowing honey wine - also known as mead - to be sold at farmer's markets and letting sports stadiums that already sell beer add hard liquor to their menus.
All follow a wave of legislative changes in recent years controlling how, where and when Pennsylvanians can buy alcohol. Groceries stores now sell beer and wine; a Delaware County Wawa might be the first store in that chain in more than a decade to sell beer.
But getting six-packs onto beer distributors' shelves has been decades in the making.
It was a running joke in Harrisburg that the effort was the Capitol's version of Groundhog Day. Nearly every session, someone would push a variation of the six-pack bill, only to be thwarted by a seemingly unmovable sentiment that modernizing the state's liquor laws would lead to financial or social havoc, or both.
But as new faces have arrived at the Capitol - and as legislative leaders have thrown their political weight behind liquor privatization - that sentiment changed.
The Wolf administration has also given the issue a boost. Although the governor does not support full-scale privatization of the state-run system, he has pushed for modernizing laws for the sale not just of beer, but of wine and spirits.
This year, he signed into law a bill passed by the Republican-controlled legislature breaking the monopoly on the sale of wine held by state-run Wine and Spirits Shops.
The new law allows restaurants, hotels, and hundreds of grocery and convenience stores to sell up to four bottles of wine to go. It allows the Liquor Control Board to open more stores - and with extended hours - on Sundays.
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