BYCU
The best drinking story of the month so far: Ale mail.
"Some beer aficionados have turned to mailing beers with each other. So a person in, say, Arizona who has access to a West Coast IPA that isn't sold here can trade with a Clevelander for, say, a Great Lakes Christmas Ale. Two things about this arrangement: It's on the honor system, and it's illegal."
Two other things about this arrangement: It's cool and it shouldn't be illegal.
So why is it illegal? I don't know. I know that, when the Volstead Act was repealed, the 21st Amendment returned broad control over alcohol to the individual states. The states jumped on it and many of them (read: Michigan, though I hear Pennsylvania is the worst) have legislated and regulated the hell out of it. The result: you can't sell a beer without jumping a parade of hurdles, and you can't ship in interstate commerce without permission from each of the states involved in the exchange.
That, anyway, is my (semi-) educated guess about why such a swell past-times as beer swapping is illegal.
And if those are the reasons, it shouldn't be illegal, but good luck getting the legislators and regulators to take their jackboot off the beer drinkers' necks any time soon.
