The result of Rhodes was another 15 years of delivering alcohol to the doorsteps of drinkers in dry states. The ruling blew the prohibition laws of dry states so wide open that shippers in wet states would ship alcohol without an actual recipient in mind. Cash-on-delivery stores would receive the packages and sell them to any buyer in the dry state. Hamm writes, “Many packages arrived addressed to fictitious consignees and were stored in the express warehouse, available to anyone who wished to ‘claim” them.’” And a 1908 report on the ASL writes of West Virginia, “the law was poorly enforced, with the “speak-easy” and “C.O.D.” business everywhere” For the tee-totaler, the barely legal C.O.D. had the same moral repugnance of the illegal speakeasy.
In a 1909 win for prohibitionists, Congress legislated the prohibition of C.O.D. alcohol sales. Alcohol had to be delivered to the person who ordered it, but it could still be shipped to dry states. Finally, the direct-to-consumer era of alcohol sales ended in 1913 with the Webb-Kenyon Act. The law, which would be reaffirmed in the 21st Amendment, stated that “spiritous, vinous, malted, fermented, or other intoxicating liquor [which] is intended, by any person interested therein, to be received, possessed, sold or in any manner used, either in the original package or otherwise,” if in violation of the law of the state it was in. Shipping alcohol came to an end. Six years later selling alcohol would go on its infamous 13 year hiatus during Prohibition.
If Prohibition has been off the books since 1933, why has it taken booze-laden Uber drivers to deliver alcohol to our front doors again? For starters, pre-Prohibition direct-to-consumer shipments were always from out of state. Most delivery services today are delivering beer, wine, and spirits that have already been introduced into the commerce of the state, that is they are just delivering products from local package stores or warehouses.
The framework for out-of-state shipments of alcohol today is a mosaic. The legality of shipping depends on the destination as well as the kind of alcohol being shipped. Alabama prohibits shipments of alcohol “from without the state” altogether. On the other end of the spectrum, Florida, Hawaii, Kentucky, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and DC allow all shipments. There is plenty of gradient in between, but interestingly, many states restrict the shipment of wine.
Our modern alcohol delivery services are not even attempting to ship from out of state, but the framework for instate shipments is still complicated. The alcohol industry is segmented into tiers that are rigidly controlled. Producers (or importers) sell to distributors, distributors then sell to retailers, and finally retailers sell to thirsty folks on the street. Like shipping from out-of-state, there is a wide array of differences between states controlling alcohol sales in state. The business model of Drizly and other alcohol delivery services is simply to know all of these legal nuances and to find the space where delivery to consumers is possible.
At the end of the day, shipping alcohol is just a legal headache. Whether as a distributor in a wet state undermining the dry laws of your neighbor, or an app-based service delivering for the liquor store a couple blocks over, liquor is being delivered down a very narrow and winding legal pipeline. It takes a more legal and a more sober mind than mine to ensure that shipping a bottle of wine from Missouri to Maine won’t land you in jail.
