So much for opening up the wine market . . .

Jacob Sullum looks at the lack of progress in opening up the domestic wine trade after the US Supreme Court decision on the topic:

In a new report, the Specialty Wine Retailers Association (SWRA) notes that liquor wholesalers have been throwing money at state legislators in a largely successful effort to maintain their government-enforced monopolies on the distribution of alcoholic beverages. Those privileges were threatened by a 2005 Supreme Court decision overturning state laws that prohibited out-of-state vintners from shipping wine directly to consumers while allowing in-state wineries to do so. The Court found that such laws violated the Commerce Clause by erecting discriminatory trade barriers. Since then the wholesalers have been urging state legislatures to comply with the ruling not by opening up their markets but by imposing uniform bans on direct shipping. According to the SWRA (whose members want the freedom to buy directly from wineries), those lobbying efforts have been accompanied by a total of $50 million in donations to state political campaigns, an amount that "dwarfs that of any other sector of the American alcohol industry as well as numerous other groups." In Texas, for example, "alcohol wholesaler political contributions were greater than the political contributions of all gambling and casino interests, retail interests, food interests and all business services . . . combined." This generosity, says the SWRA, "coincides with the enactment of alcohol wholesaler-supported policies in nearly every state that protect the wholesaler."

Yet another proof of the dangers of regulation to a free market. Adam Smith wasn't thinking of the wine trade when he wrote "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." People of the same trade are even more effective in this sort of conspiracy when they can get the government to do their dirty work for them.