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Voters can scrap mandate for minibottles

OUR VIEW: Lawmakers right to allow voters to make overdue constitutional change

South Carolina lawmakers have taken the sensible step of allowing voters to decide the question of how to serve liquor in restaurants and bars.

Minibottles were mandated 25 years ago as a control measure on how much liquor was being served per drink, but now South Carolina is the last state to mandate them.

Will the state continue to require the use of minibottles by restaurants and bars selling liquor by the drink? Will South Carolina do as other states and allow liquor for drinks to be poured from larger bottles?

South Carolina Mothers Against Drunk Driving, once supporters of the minibottles, has shifted to favoring liquor by the "free pour." MADD says the 1.7-ounce minibottles make a stronger drink than the approximate 1 ounce poured from larger bottles in other states.

The state's powerful hospitality industry also has pushed hard to eliminate the minibottle system.

The combined forces succeeded finally in the last days of this legislative session in getting lawmakers to agree to let voters decide the issue. In November, a ballot question will ask whether voters want to continue the constitutional mandate on using minibottles or scrap the system.

The theory originally was that minibottles would reduce the amount of alcohol being consumed. The effect indeed may be just the opposite.

The law should be changed. It simply is not good public policy to mandate stronger drinks at the very same time the state is battling drunk driving and highway death rates among the nation's highest.