If you're confused by recent proclamations by beer wholesaler trade groups that "Texas craft beer is thriving because of good regulation," you should be, because many small breweries are struggling. Yes, some Texas craft breweries are growing. Some are even thriving. But this is only in spite of the law, not because of it.

Collectively, small Texas craft brewers make up only 3 percent of the beer marketplace in Texas. Texas ranks a pitiful 46th in the U.S. in breweries per capita. And Texas breweries lack the right to sell beer to-go, a right that breweries in 49 other states enjoy, along with Texas wineries, distilleries and brewpubs.

Besides being deprived of the ability to compete on a level playing field with their manufacturing competitors, Texas breweries are also subject to the bizarre vagaries of our Alcoholic Beverage Code. To put the matter neatly in perspective, a single brewery in Texas can require as many as 14 individual licenses and permits in order to convey their product to market. That's enough red tape to affix a hammer to a sickle.

Making matters a lot worse, in 2017, persuaded by beer wholesalers, the Legislature enacted HB 3287. This legislation created a new dimension of absurdity: In the case of the most logical investments and mergers, it restricted or penalized the flow of capital from one brewery to another. It had the real effect of devaluing Texas' small, independent craft breweries the day it became law.

Under the most ludicrous provision of the law, certain breweries could be required to pay a distributor for the right to sell their own beer in their own tap room. No value-added service here — it's just mandated payment to a third-party for doing nothing.

The beer middlemen foisted this upon the Legislature as intended to protect craft brewers from internationally owned multibillion-dollar corporate mega-brewers. The final version of this legislation actually carved out the mega-brewers' fake craft portfolios.

In less than a year as law, specific outcomes of this legislation are already manifest. Active deals were scuttled, expansion plans curtailed and, yes, it has forced some breweries to lay off employees and put off new hires.

There is also a larger and more insidious general outcome of the beer wholesalers' recently demonstrated hostility to small breweries. Texas has become known around the country as a place that's dangerous to deploy capital and a risky proposition to start out in the beer business. In effect, it's not just the laws on the books you have to be afraid of; investors also to have to fear the unpredictable regulatory climate.

History shows us that every time beer laws have been modernized in Texas, the marketplace has grown overall. Those expansions have benefited brewers, wholesalers and retailers alike. Most important, modernizations have grown the Texas economy and provided consumers greater access to the locally manufactured products they demand.

Jim Dow is chief lobbyist for the Texas Craft Brewers Guild. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

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