We all know how badly Prohibition failed.  The history books tell us that the noble experiment to stamp out the societal ills caused by demon rum merely served to glorify drinking and to create a new class of criminals.  On the positive side, it also spawned NASCAR racing.

It was a great idea, I suppose, when one considers the millions of ruined lives laid at the feet of Madam Ethyl, and it is too bad that it failed so miserably.  Alcoholism and binge drinking continue to kill and maim bodies, marriages and careers, and people continue to do dumb, dumb things such as serving beer at high school graduation parties. (What a great message with which to send the kids out into the world.) 

But, this doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy the occasional laugh over another alcohol related story, and I recently ran across one that really tickles me. As far as I know, the only butt of the joke is the Michigan legislature.  Again. (Is it true they once passed a law shortening the gestation period of the cow in order to speed beef to market?  Probably not.)

It seems that when you go to a store and buys a keg of beer what one actually buys is the beer itself.  You pay a deposit on the stainless steel keg, which you get back when you return it.

Now, for some reason, in Michigan, until last June there was a state law that prohibited stores from charging more than a $10 deposit on these kegs.  I guess the beer cost about $35.00, so you’d pay $45 or so and get $10 back when you returned the keg.

The problem was that people discovered that you could take the keg to a scrap yard and sell it for $30 or more. And, every year, the breweries were losing tens of thousands of kegs.

The keg costs the brewery a LOT more than the cost of the stainless steel.  From what I could learn, it costs about $155 for a brewery to buy a new keg.

The customers were making a $20+ profit at the scrap yard, and the breweries were losing $155.  Presumably, the scrap yards, who apparently didn’t give a darn about any of this, were making out just fine.  Remember now that the people who were selling the kegs did not OWN the kegs:  they were merely renting them. All they bought was the beer inside them. You can make up your own names for what to call the people who buy and sell property they do not own.  

The breweries asked the Michigan legislature to do something about it, such as forcing the scrap yards to quit taking beer kegs or raising the minimum deposit to $90, which would at least cover some of the cost of buying a new keg. Or, not regulating the deposit at all.  

The legislature scratched its shaggy head and about a year ago and said, “What!  $90 deposit on a $35 bucket of beer? That’s too much!”  

So, said legislature bailed out the breweries by passing a new law that raised the deposit to $30.   

If my research is accurate, the value of stainless steel has now risen so that a 33 pound ½ barrel keg is now worth about $60.   

One could wonder why the legislature is regulating the deposit pricing at all. I myself wish they’d instead spend their energy enacting a bottle bill to impose deposits on all drink containers (not just the carbonated ones) to help clean up the ditches which seem to collect all kinds of “energy drink” bottles and fast food containers from slobs who drop them wherever they finish them.          

Clearly, a disproportionate number of these people finish their drinks just as they are walking or driving by my house, judging by the number of plastic bottles and cups, beer cans, pop cans, glass bottles, wine bottles, and whiskey bottles I find in my lawn.  At least I get to claim the 10-cent deposits on the returnable ones.  

I have yet to find an empty beer keg in my lawn, sad to say.  That would be worth some real money---at the scrap yard.    

                            © by Jim Whitehouse

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