Raleigh, NC – North Carolina’s 170 legislators received a letter Thursday from Grover Norquist, the founder of Americans for Tax Reform, who is calling for an end to the state’s “protectionist, anti-consumer restriction on craft brewery self-distribution.” To read the letter, click here.
ATR’s entry into the Craft Freedom fight – joining The John Locke Foundation, The Civitas Institute, and the National Federation of Independent Businesses – marks the fourth nonprofit, free-market organization to support raising or eliminating the state’s archaic limit on brewery self-distribution, a needless regulation that hurts entrepreneurs and impedes investment, hiring, and economic growth across North Carolina.
In the letter, Norquist called North Carolina’s brewery self-distribution limit a “glaring example of harmful regulation that inflicts economic harm, while serving no purpose other than pure protectionism.” Norquist compared the law to Obamacare, noting that “the arcane law barring self-distribution for breweries beyond a certain size is a state-created disincentive on business growth and the new hiring that comes with it.” Norquist complimented the legislature’s great strides in improving state tax policies, adding that, “Allowing this protectionist, anti-consumer restriction on craft brewery self-distribution to stand would be both indefensible and completely uncharacteristic of the legislature.”
Craft Freedom spokesman John Marrino of The Olde Mecklenburg Brewery in Mecklenburg County is thrilled to welcome ATR and Grover Norquist to the battle for freedom from forced business relationships. “It’s a compelling day for our cause. We are honored ATR has joined us in this fight. To see such support from an organization as accomplished in achieving reform as ATR lends confidence that North Carolina’s craft brewery marketplace will finally operate without anti-free market barriers. Both ATR & Craft Freedom look forward to a cap repeal and a freer North Carolina for its homegrown breweries.”
Norquist founded ATR in 1985 at the request of President Ronald Reagan. It promotes a system in which taxes are simpler, flatter, more visible, and lower than they are today.
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