Imagine for a moment that there was Magic Beer.

Imagine it tasted great, came in hundreds of flavors, and didn’t have any of the drawbacks associated with alcohol. No short or long term health effects, no drunk driving accidents or the 80,000 or so deaths attributed to excessive alcohol use per year. Imagine it didn’t cost the country $200 billion in lost productivity, healthcare costs and criminal justice system costs, just by drinking it. Imagine if you might live longer if you drank it.

Imagine this Magic Beer was only made by the 2,500 craft brewers in the USA. They could brew it, and sell it with minimal interference from governing agencies. Happily making their Magic Beer because they enjoyed it, and they knew their customers enjoyed it too.

Magic Beer would be the end of mass produced light beer.

Now imagine that the FDA was allowed to impose regulations that required every brewer to submit an expensive application any time they created a new beer or a new bottle shape, unlike the simple process currently handled by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.

Even the tiniest nuance of flavor adjustment or smallest change to alcohol content would require filing an application. That application would be sent off, with a check for a very large amount of money, to the FDA, along with samples of the beer, for testing. The brewer would then wait, up to six months, but possibly even longer before they could sell their new beer. If there were any errors in the application, or at the FDA’s discretion, the beer couldn’t be sold, and the application process would have to start all over again.

If you were a magic beer consumer, you’d be upset about this.

If you were a brewer of magic beer, you’d be upset about this.

This could put you out of business.

This could put all of your employees out of work.