In the end, the only bill related to beer to actually pass was House Bill 1316, which called for the creation of this new task force. The legislation was co-sponsored by Delegates Warren Miller and Benjamin Kramer, the latter of which participates in the new group.

Among all the political strife that has brought the state to this moment in time, there is agreement on two cornerstones of what this new task force is hoping to discuss, debate, and analyze. The 20-member task force will both consider powers bestowed on State Comptroller Peter Franchot, who oversees alcohol regulation, and aspects of public health as it relates to alcohol use and abuse. Attorney and former state legislator Bruce Poole, who is chair of the task force, tells GBH that there is particular worry of underage alcohol consumption, especially based off of numbers shared by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that say 11% of all alcohol consumed in the United States is done by children and teens aged 12 to 20. That statistic is somewhat misleading, however, as it’s based on a 2005 study for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s Underage Drinking Enforcement Training Center. It’s also based on numbers from 2002.

In reality, binge drinking among youth has reportedly been declining. In 2015, Time wrote that the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration showed the percentage of underage people who drink fell between 2002 and 2013, from 28.8% to 22.7%. Then in 2017, the New York Times cited a study that showed “frequent binge drinking”—at least two occasions of five or more drinks in a row over a two-week period—”decreased among American adolescents over the period from 1991 to 2015.”

Even in beer-focused media, concern over declining drinking rates among young, legal-age consumers has been widely reported, including particular concern for the next generation of drinkers who show increased attention to aspects of health and wellness. Author Jeff Alworth pondered the decline of consumption in August. MillerCoors has planned multiple low-calorie, low-carb, and low-ABV brands with the specific intent of offering younger drinkers what they want as they shift toward healthier options. There’s even a growing chorus of people that see non-alcoholic beer as a strong market in the U.S.

According to a paper published in the most recent issue of the Journal of Wine Economics, the overall per capita ethanol consumption from beer for U.S. adults has stayed flat or gone down, depending on what year is picked as a starting point, since 1972. Wine has been flat, and only spirits has seen an increase, with additional consumption projected through 2022. The finding is made a bit more awkward for Maryland, which was one of 16 states (plus the District of Columbia) that had above average and increasing consumption of spirits. Maryland's neighbors in DC and Delaware were both cited for above average and increasing consumption of beer, and Delaware was the only state to be cited in all three of beer, wine, and spirits.

The findings don’t align with initial considerations that beer is a root of problems for underage drinking, especially considering projections for four years out, which would include the youngest and soon-to-be-legal-age drinkers. Even more so, additional numbers don’t show Maryland with an outbreak of underage consumption.

According to 2017 figures reported by the CDC, Maryland’s 12-to-20-year-olds who have reported to have ever had at least one drink of alcohol rank 26th out of 29 states that reported to the nation's health protection agency, only polling worse than Maine, Rhode Island, and Utah. With regards to binge drinking, however, 13% of Maryland teens admitted to the act, defined as four or more drinks of alcohol in a row if female or five or more drinks of alcohol in a row if male, within a couple of hours, on at least one day during the 30 days before a survey. That puts the state 20th out of 36 states to report data, roughly smack dab on the national average of 13.1%. When it comes to illegal, underage drinking, there’s always room for improvement, but in terms of statewide problems, numbers may not indicate the dire need for drastic overhauls, especially if national trends of declining rates were to apply moving forward.

But this is just related to youth. It doesn’t consider the broader issue of declining alcohol consumption globally, which one data and market intelligence company believes is happening because of falling beer sales in the U.S.

Poole noted that, while alcohol content of the country’s best selling beers like Bud Light (4.2%) is low, “a lot of craft beers are now at 7%, 9%, and some of them are in excess of 10%, and yet in particular, young people don’t get what the impact of that is.” In 2014, the only time the figure has been analyzed and reported, the Brewers Association found that the average ABV of its craft brewer members was 5.9%, a number taken well before an ongoing proliferation of lower calorie (and lower ABV) and “easy drinking” options that have flooded shelves from craft brewers. Poole noted the existence of the website getdrunknotfat.com as an example of ways young drinkers are considering methods to maximize inebriation, but according to Alexa web analytics, the site is the 64,567-ranked site in the U.S. (as of Oct. 8) weighted by pageviews and overall traffic. As comparison, people spend about a minute more on the advice site Quora.com, typically around the 50th most popular site in the country, according to Alexa, than getdrunknotfat.com, practically an eternity in Internet experience.

Poole also cited a study released this summer in the British Medical Journal that showed morality by liver disease increased the most among 25-to-34-year-olds from 2009-16, driven by by alcohol-related liver disease. Heavy drinking is seen to be the factor, but the cause for that behavior, according to the study's authors, also correlates with the global financial crisis as well as other societal factors, like care for young veterans.

Still, the rapid increase in the number of alcohol brands and sites where alcohol is available is something that Poole says is front of mind, noting that the rising number of breweries and wineries where bottles or cans can be sold on site has “dramatically increased.”

“I don’t know that it means that alcohol is, in fact, any more accessible to minors, for instance,” Poole says. “My guess is that taphouses and wineries are places where the people selling are pretty darn cautious, so their population [of customers] is not going to be underage drinkers.”

But it’s this kind of rhetoric that has brewers worried. Formed in 2017, the first iteration of an interdisciplinary group focused on alcohol was Comptroller Peter Franchot's "Reform on Tap" task force. That 40-person roster included 17 brewery representatives, as well as assorted community members like in-state journalists and someone from the Maryland Tourism Coalition. There were also nine politicians or officials, and four members that were distributors and retailers.

This time around, the 20-person group includes seven each of officials and unaffiliated community members, mostly representing public health. There are two brewery representatives and one person from a winery, two retailers and one distributor.

In multiple conversations, people in-and-around the beer industry mentioned to GBH that the formation of the Task Force to Study State Alcohol Regulation, Enforcement, Safety and Public Health seemed to be a focused dig at Franchot, who has made plenty of political enemies in his decades in office. (You can see past GBH coverage here, here, here, here, and here.) He admitted as much on the GBH podcast, saying that pushback from his attempt to modernize alcohol laws came from politicians who are “completely owned lock, stock, and barrel by the beer distributors.”

“This is not something unique to Democrats,” he continued. “The Republicans are too, and they all claim they’re for small business and free enterprise, and it’s a lot of nonsense. They aren’t.”

The assumed influence of these companies, combined with the makeup and background of this new task force is also causing worry. “The entire task force reeks of conflict of interest,” Union’s Adam Benesch tells GBH.