Episode 166 - Give Me Liberty and Give Me a Drink with Jarrett Dieterle

In this wide-ranging and incredibly revelatory interview with Jarrett Dieterle, booze policy wonk and author of Give Me Liberty and Give me a Drink, some of the topics we discuss include:

• How Jarrett fused his career in alcohol policy with his passion for great drinks to generate a text that questions the inconsistencies of our fragmented nation’s alcohol purchasing and consumption policies.
• Why Eric thinks it’s important to frame most of these legislative questions in terms of a “freedom vs. security” stance, otherwise figured as a “conservation vs. risk” query. Jarrett does a great job of re-framing this stance by demonstrating how most of our nation’s alcohol regulations do a poor job of optimizing for both freedom AND security.
• We also talk about Blue Laws, alcohol control states, and the bizarre battles that poor lawmaking can create between industries that would otherwise coexist peacefully - such as bars and restaurants and the alcohol producers who support them.
• But, we’re not just here to complain. We really dig into some of these laws, identify some of the faulty reasoning behind them, and really lay bare some of the iniquities behind them that we, as US citizens, have the capacity to change.
• Finally, we conclude this episode by considering the contemporary legislative changes that have been rapidly changing in the wake of the COVID-19 Coronavirus and what these might mean for the future of Alcohol legislation in the United States.