Oh swell. It may be the end of the year - even later - before the reign of the minibottle comes to an end in South Carolina. Over in Columbia, the state's liquor wholesalers and distributors have been scratching and clawing over which side should be empowered to deliver liquor to bars and restaurants. Rather than settle the catfight themselves, S.C. legislators apparently prefer to wait until the distributors and wholesalers settle their differences on their own.

Because vast sums of money are at stake, that likely won't happen soon. Never mind that S.C. voters in November expressed a clear desire to allow bar and restaurant owners to pour drinks from big bottles, should they desire to do so. Never mind that minibottle-size jolts of alcohol contribute to the state's unacceptable drunken-driving rates.

Here's the problem: Neither wholesalers nor distributors deliver liquor to bars and restaurants now. Current S.C. law requires bar owners to pick up their minibottles at liquor stores with federal wholesale licenses - an unreasonable burden in counties, such as Georgetown, that have no licensed wholesaler of their own.

As The Sun News reported this week, the distributors see themselves as the natural entity for exclusive delivery to bars and restaurants. They already have fleets of trucks, now in use to deliver minibottles to the wholesalers' liquor stores. Why, they wonder, should wholesalers be empowered to buy delivery trucks of their own when they, the distributors, can easily handle that job?

The wholesalers, not surprisingly, see the distributors' argument as a ploy to cut them out of the brave new world of free pour. They argue, accurately, that the four companies that distribute liquor in South Carolina don't individually carry all the liquor brands that bars and restaurants sell. So they, the wholesalers, are in a better position to provide drinking establishments with the exact liquors their owners wish to sell to customers.

Tom Sponseller of the S.C. Hospitality Association has the right personal take on resolving this catfight: Allow wholesalers and distributors both to deliver liquor to bars. That, he says, would create more competition - always a good idea.

Some other Hospitality Association members, says Sponseller, are willing to wait to see how the fight comes out. Their chief interest is in receiving liquor deliveries from someone so they no longer have to pick up liquor themselves.

But waiting for distributors and wholesalers to come to their senses seems dangerous to us. They might never agree on the liquor-delivery issue. Given legislators' unfortunate propensity to kowtow to these liquor-based special interests, the result of waiting could be a free-pour law that doesn't include delivery.

Led by the Grand Strand delegation, legislators should gut it up and authorize wholesalers and distributors both to deliver liquor to customers. The market should decide which liquor-based special interest handles the job better. More important, legislators should fast track a complete free-pour enabling bill to passage in time for this year's tourism season. Forcing South Carolinians to wait until 2006 for the free-pour law they authorized in 2004 should not be an option.