New Beer Laws - Jon Song

In recent years, craft beer has experienced a huge boom in popularity and microbreweries are producing more beer than every before.  Unfortunately, by producing so much beer, these microbreweries are breaching the American three-tier system, consisting of large breweries, distributors and microbreweries, that governs the beer industry; this system was created to prevent the largest breweries from controlling the entire industry since those in the microbrewery category are allowed to produce and distribute their own beer.  In many states, a microbrewery can no longer serve their beer at bars and restaurants if they exceed the production limit.  In response to the popularity behind this brews, many states, such as Arizona, Wyoming and North Dakota, have rewritten their beer laws in order to allow these microbreweries to continue producing.

I believe that the laws passed by Arizona, Wyoming and North Dakota are great steps in the right direction.  Allowing microbreweries to produce more beer creates more jobs and more spending in the economy.  Furthermore, since beer is a form of alcohol, states will reap profits from excise taxes as more craft beer, which usually also priced higher per beverage.  More states should be taking actions to rewrite their beer laws; the old limit is 1.2 million gallons of beer, whereas Arizona's new limit is 6.2 million and even with this limit, producers and distributors agree that this allows microbreweries to continue to expand without taking power away from distributors.  Seeing as there is no potential monopoly-esque conflict, there is no economic reasons that the beer production cap for microbreweries should not be increased.