Minibottles on the outs

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The House and Senate have stalemated over the issue of liquor wholesalers and distributors. The House legislation appears to offer greater protection for some of the current players in the system. The Senate provides greater competition.

The Senate bill would be the preferred option, but the details matter less than the need to approve some type of legislation. South Carolinians, in fact, already have spoken resoundingly on this issue. Last November, voters approved a referendum to allow bars and restaurants to use bigger bottles and get rid of the minibottles. Lawmakers cannot let disagreements over the details undermine the clearly expressed wishes of voters.

South Carolinians know that the small liquor containers contribute to this state's high rate of drunken-driving deaths. South Carolina is the only state that still requires bars and restaurants to use minibottles — the bottle often used on airplanes — when serving liquor.

With the minibottle, this Bible-belt state has some of the strongest drinks in the nation. Bartenders generally empty the full contents of a minibottle into a mixed drink. As a result, the beverage contains 1.7 ounces of liquor. Drinks that include several liquors would be even more intoxicating. (Bartenders complain, meanwhile, that using minibottles prevents them from properly mixing drinks.)

In every other state in the nation, however, bartenders pour from larger bottles. Those drinks generally contain 1 ounce to 1.25 ounces of alcohol.

That means drinks here are about 50 percent stronger than cocktails in other states. It's not hard to detect a connection between South Carolina's potent mixed drinks and our state's high rate — among the worst in the nation — of drunken-driving deaths.

Getting rid of minibottles, of course, won't solve the drunken-driving problem in this state. The best deterrent would be a better funded Highway Patrol to crack down on drunken driving. Lawmakers are trying to increase the ranks of state troopers but the Highway Patrol will still be far below the levels of 10 years ago — based on population growth.

But minibottles are a contributing factor to our state's high rate of drunken-driving fatalities. The bottles need to go.