Is Sam Adams’ New 28 Percent ABV Beer Legal in Your State?
Jarrett Dieterle, senior fellow at R Street, a public policy organization dedicated to promoting, “free markets and limited, effective government,” notes that while it’s good that Prohibition-era laws are gradually being repealed, “many of the states that [do] repeal their 3.2 laws merely [replace] them with slightly less onerous versions.”
Utah’s 5 percent ABV limit on beer is only one of many halfhearted attempts by state legislatures to reel back the control the state has over what you can consume. Dieterle points out that Oklahoma simply created a new cap at 8.99 percent ABV, whereas Kansas’ legislature only increased the 3.2 ABW percent cap to 6 percent ABV (a meager 2 percent increase in ABV).
The real issue with this archaic approach to beer regulating, is that the new laws are still, “arbitrary and especially unsuited to the modern craft-beer era.” Dieterle tells Reason that “the vast majority of these laws would also impact beers with much lower ABV levels than 28 percent” such as Imperial IPAs, which typically range from 7 to 12 percent ABV.
As Dieterle says, “we have a wonderful diversity of beer varieties in modern America, and it just makes no sense to have these arbitrary caps on alcohol levels still in place.”
