Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell has an idea: free market alcohol. And it’s a damned good one, one that North Carolina needs to consider as soon as possible.

Currently in Virginia, much like in North Carolina, alcohol is monitored by the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control — and, like in North Carolina, you can only really get liquor from ABC stores. This essentially means that the government has a monopoly on the sale and distribution of alcohol, a move done to (allegedly) ensure that the government can properly tax and restrict alcohol. This definition is a bit fuzzy, but nonetheless, it stands to this day, and Virginia has had the Alcoholic Beverage Control system for over 75 years. The problem with this is pretty clear to anyone who favors free market economies: the Virginia government is not a really good controller of alcohol. ABC stores really do not in and of themselves curb or halt drunk driving, and their existence really only serves as a way to streamline the taxing of alcohol in Virginia, albeit at the expense of the Virginia Government. Currently, these stores (all 332 of them) draw in about $220 million a year.

Enter Governor Bob McDonnell. McDonnell wants to privatize the state liquor industry, allowing companies in Virginia to sell liquor to consumers directly, subject to monitoring and restrictions by the state. This has some pretty obvious benefits — while the state can still tax liquor at the usual rate (and thus make the same amount of money), privatization of Virginia liquor means that the state does not have to own and operate a huge number of stores, which saves it quite a bit of money. In addition, by making liquor more readily available and removing many of the limitations imposed upon customers, it is very likely that purchases of liquor from stores will increase. In short, a lot of money would be saved, and a lot of needless government intervention into the private lives of citizens would be stopped.

Of course, there are negatives to this plan. According to the linked article, the process of closing down the state’s 332 stores would be fairly expensive in the short term, including $40 million in severance for employees, $15 million in order to close down trucking contracts, and millions spent pulling out of leases for Virginia’s many rented liquor stores. Furthermore, a lot of interest groups, particularly religious and parental groups, claim that the increased availability of liquor would encourage drunk driving and risky behavior — an unproven assertion, but at least a plausible one. On top of it all, many Virginia politicians seem leery about changing public policy unless the change would result in a net benefit for the state, which is difficult to prove given the aforementioned transitional expenditures.

Still, I hope Virginia does manage to privatize alcohol, and I seriously hope that North Carolina considers doing so as well. While I may sound a bit excessively right-wing, I firmly believe that the government has no place intervening into the private lives of citizens, even if it does so in an attempt to curtail crime. ABC stores are little more than a useless vestige of prohibition era ridiculousness, and it makes both economical and logical sense to get rid of them as soon as possible. Drunk driving is not merely an issue of where one buys alcohol — it is an issue of the amount of consumption, of behavior in bars and at parties, and of self-control. The fact that something can be linked to crime does not necessarily require it to be sold exclusively by the state — current gun laws are an excellent example of this. In short, it’s time for Virginia — and North Carolina — to enter the modern era and cast off prohibition era misconceptions about alcohol — our government budgets will thank us.