Oregon Liquor Scandal: Inside the Bourbon Hoarding Corruption Scheme | Ep. 118

Oregon’s liquor agency was caught hoarding rare bourbon for themselves, and you won’t believe how deep the favoritism and sketchy behavior went. In this episode of Arsenic Culture, Matt, Jason, and Kendra break down the OLCC scandal, the shady bourbon allocation system, and what it reveals about liquor politics in America.

Are these “rare bottle lotteries” actually rigged? Is government-run alcohol distribution the lesser evil? And most importantly… should we start our own damn club?

Drop a comment and tell us what you think. 👇
Let’s stir some shit up.

#bourbonscandal #OLCC #rarewhiskey

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Transcript

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There's no like perfect solution though. Well there's there's corruption everywhere. I mean, guess it's just like what's a lesser the two evils? Or Comment and tell us what you think. Hell, maybe we can make some change. We'll start our own damn club. Fuck yeah. Welcome back to Arsenic Culture where beer don't count, but bad decisions do on Matt. I'm Jason. I'm Kendra. Uh, Jason, have you. Yes. Won any bourbon lotteries lately? I did actually. We, got, we posted a video. We, won, I won an old rip van Winkle. is that the last last, that's the last, the last. before that? No, no. Like ever. That was like the five years, was the only like quote unquote pappy that you ever won, Uh, yeah. I've won it once. That's it. The only time I've ever won. That's that's the only bottle. The only bottle of Pappy I've ever owned. is, Well, no, Pappy, but I've owned an old Rip Van Winkle 10-year-old, and a lot B 12-year-old. That's it. The 10 year is the one that you won that last time we were together. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Uh, you've won B TAC a couple I've won stag before. Yeah. George t Stag. Yeah. What about you, Kendra? When's the last time you won a bourbon in a lottery? Well, I did win bourbon when I was pregnant at the Halloween party. You did? Actually, I You did. Actually, I won a good bottle of bourbon, but I was We, uh, we, this was, this was years ago and uh, we, they did a Halloween costume contest and there was just like 20 people there or whatever, and they were, they had like a little gift basket and it had, I can't remember what the bourbon was. Uh, it was nice. It might have been a blands or something like that. This was back before like it was, it was easier to get back then. And she was pregnant, so she couldn't drink, but her costume was a super Oh, it was Super girl. Yeah. But the Clark Kent, like basically Superman. So she had the glasses on and then a tie and a shirt. But underneath her shirt you open up and she painted her belly with a Superman ass. It I like it. I like it. It's pretty cute. So we are going to talk about the lotteries, the pappy lotteries, the BTech lotteries, all the lotteries. Yeah. Bourbon, There's a lot of them. Um, but the idea Kendra, um, you may or may not know is you'll go to like a liquor store or somewhere and they'll hold a lottery to where you can do it. Like they'll give you a number or like a wristband. They're set up in any numerous different ways. But the idea is these bourbons are so hard to get. That they can't just put 'em up on the shelf anymore 'cause people will run over each other trying to get'em and it creates a lot of issues. And then there's a lot of like fighting and stuff like that. So by doing the lottery, it's supposed to be a fair and balanced system for everybody to, to get equal chance at buying it. Right. Okay. Correct. Correct. And Some of them. actually, and even Oregon, we're gonna talk a little bit about that. but they did, they do online. So it's online Laies. Do they really? Okay, so this particular story here, I revolves around the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission, the OLCC. There are certain states where the state essentially controls liquor sales, um, stuff like package storage. We talked about this a second ago. In Tennessee, when we go down your parents' house, those are all state, I believe they're all state So North Carolina is, I'm trying to think about Tennessee. I'm not a hundred percent sure on. that because you have like total wines and stuff, But it doesn't. So different states can have different policies. Yeah. So like Pennsylvania. You know, is a state controlled Ohio state controlled. Right. But Ohio, actually, they have independent liquor stores. But if you notice, like if most people go up there from Kentucky and get Weller antique, the red label And how they know where it's at. They Have a website, so it's OHLQ, like liquor. Okay. And you can go on there and see what they have. they have. Inventory So if they have the inventory. it has to be set out Right. Well, allegedly. Allegedly. Yeah. As we are not, not to not to offset you there, but there's a lot. of different states, a lot of different variations of We can, if it's called a package store, that means it's government owned A, B, C. what they call 'em. Package Like if you go to North Carolina, They're like, I think it says a, B, C package stores. Okay. I think it's what it Okay. Uh, yeah. And ABC stands for like alcohol beverage commission or something like that. But um, yeah. Do you remember in Tennessee, like back in the day, we'd go on a road trip, we'd go on a beer trip or something and we would go to a, a liquor store and they would have two different High, high gravity, basically anything over, I think like 17 or 13 or 14. it was under, I think It was like before double digits even. No. was like, I think it was like 9% might've been, I know, like double IPAs would be, on the high gravity anything that was higher than a certain percentage alcohol number would have to go on this side, which is basically all your spirits, your, your liquors, and then like the beer and then like low gravity stuff. Cider would be on the other side. Why they did it that way? I don't know. There was a reason. There's some archaic reason why they do it. I, I think they did away with that They did. they did. Um, but, uh, yeah, I remember there was a, a beer store that we used to go craft brewed, craft brewed, and, and I remember they had like high gravity beer and low gravity beer. You had to walk outside across and then into another out. Look I know that was like attached to the same building. It was just like so yeah, You had to walk outside the door? There was Not, a, like an InBetween either. You had to walk out physically and then go to the next so no sense No, it, it, it did not. a lot of these laws are archaic and we're gonna talk about that and, and they probably should be done away with, but it's just kind of like everything sticks around just because it's been It's a three tier system, ma'am. It needs to be. revamped for sure. Our buddy over at the mashup, Kenny Loves a three tier system. Uh, he talks about it all. the time. Oh, I'm Inside joke, you'll see that. Oh, geez. Yeah. No, I, I think it's, I think it's ridiculous too. So the three tier system is where, um, you have three tiers. You got the manufacturer, the producer of the alcohol, you have the middleman, the distributor, and then you have the, um, retailer. I. Uh, on, you know, selling it directly to the consumer. Those are the three tiers the government implements. So all alcohol sales have to follow those channels. That's why they call it three tier producer, middleman, retailer. I. Yeah, Okay. now there's been a lot of work kind of revamping that. There's a lot of like direct to consumer sales from, you know, distilleries or breweries or whatever, which I think has really helped kind of open up availability and um, just kind of makes it easier. It reduces, supposed to reduce prices also. Um, but Oregon is another one of these states where, um, it is, it is, they control the sale of, actually, it's just. No, it's everything except for they don't control beer, wine Insider. They just do high gravity stuff. Okay. But the OLCC, the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission is we legal out Yep. Which is crazy to me though.'cause if you think about it, if you read online and stuff, like a big competitor. with Anything craft beer or beer? or liquor is cannabis as THC. How in the hell did you get 'em both Under the same umbrella? Like, that seems so weird to me out there. But No, I, it's been, it's been legal in Oregon. It was one of the first states I think. that made it? Okay. That's Maybe not the whole state, but regions Sure. Okay. That makes sense. Um, well, they were established in 1933 following the repeal of prohibition. I think a lot of these entities were after prohibition. People were still scared to death of alcohol, so they started implementing these weird laws to try to kind of keep a, you know, handle on it. Because if alcohol were illegal, then we would all just die. Right. Yeah, because nobody can control before that too, though, They had some of these going into place because people was making people go blind, essentially. Oh, you're talking about like before prob know way back when you're talking about like moonshine and shit like that? But even like Rock gut whiskey. they would Have like wood whiskey, which was like, oh whiskey. It'd make you go blind or kill people. So you had, you had to kind of help with that a little bit. Um, well Oregon, as part of this process, they, um, control all the means and distribution of all the hard to get bourbons, like we were just talking about, doing the laies and stuff like that. Uh, stuff like the Pappy Van Winkle series, lot Bs. And then the B TAC is BTAC stands for Buffalo Trace Antique Collection. Um, those are bottles that are again, like really expensive, really hard to get. Um, this particular event centers around, uh, I think. Pappy was the one specifically in question here, which kind of so, so different bottles of pappy and then they mentioned Elmer t Lee by name, which is odd. But Speaking of I brought a bottle. nice, Since I don't, own any I was like, I was like, did I bottle You thought you thought you had that in you? you pull it on my shelf? And I was like, did I have one over there? I, I, very possible, be yours. I just pulled it off. But no, since I didn't have any pappy actually, I was like, well hell, let's bring it T Lee. They named it my name, so I'm gonna be opening this and we'll, uh, we'll Try it. hell yeah man. So he was actually. Like a master distiller there at Buffalo Trace. You know, he was, I think I think he was a guy that created LANs guy. I should know that. But anyway, he's got some, some hype to him. If you can see, you can see his picture behind there. If you look through. he's also on the back. Okay. So he is actually the person that came that's him. He na he named it after this one. So it's a single barrel bourbon 90 proof Nothing special. But It's really just smooth. sipping, right? He like, I think his descriptors. were smooth, Caramel vanilla. That's, kind, that's kind of, all he it's like the go-to one. So for an approachable bourbon that used to. be able to find on the shelf, this is a nice one. It's one of, it's my cousin's actually. Uh, favorite bourbon. Is it really? I think it's a That's really good. I like That's great. Um, but yeah, this, this scandal inv, uh, revolves I believe around the, the Pappy 23 year, uh, and then some of the btac stuff as well. An internal investigation revealed that the, that OLCC executives, including executive director Steve Marks, used their positions to divert rare bourbons for personal use. They instructed staff to reserve these bottles at specific liquor stores bypassing bypassing the public lottery system Now. the hell? and that, that's a super shitty thing. Um, but it's just like when you, when you, these are government officials, so this is, this is kind of a big deal. Like you're abusing your power, you're abusing the power that people gave you to benefit yourself. So that is, that right there is probably the worst of it. That's a big deal. You know, people appointed you to this position and you're fucking them over. You know what I mean? Um, but when you compare this to like. Yeah. Any other quote unquote crime. It's not that severe. It's very collar. It's very white collar. We talked about, uh, Rudy. Yeah. Remember the Rudy Kwin story about the, the wine guy? He ended up, uh, creating fake wines, but selling for millions of dollars. Um, like at the end of the day, a lot of people were like, fucking, what did he actually do though? Like, he, he swindled a bunch of rich people, is what he did. And yeah, it's a crime. But again, people were like. He ended up getting like 10 years for that. That'll probably get you more trouble than killing. somebody. Swindle. Swindling. A rich fucking over rich people and they're like the Yeah. The billionaire in the story. Uh, what was the name? Something Koch. Remember Steve Koch or something like that? Bill K, bill Coke. That's what it was. He's his family. He's, he's got like family money. He's a billionaire. And um, the only reason he kind of came down on him is because he was bored. He was just kind of like, oh, this doesn't seem right. And he just basically used time and money to just he's like, I'm not gonna let this go. exactly. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's, that's a really dangerous proposition is you offend somebody with money because then they're gonna be like, watch what I can do to you. So, um, but yeah, so it's not, it's not that. Bad when you compare it to like other things that you can do, but it's still a really shitty thing to do. Um, the scandal came to light in early February, 2023. So this was recently, um, when Oh, I thought you said 1930. No, that's when the, That's when, yeah, that's when the OLCC was created. Oh, okay. 1933 was right after prohibition was Reed. That's when it was created. Okay. Um, but this scandal happened real recently. Uh, media reports, uh, detailed the unethical practice within the OLCC. Uh, the governor at the time, Tina Kotek, called for the resignation of implicated officials, including Steve Marks, who was kind of heading up the whole thing. Uh, afterwards, multiple officials were replaced on administrative leave. Um, uh, we'll get into this. The Department of Justice launched a criminal investigation, uh, Oregon Ethics Committee and, and initiated a separate inquiry, uh, as well, I think. Six people admitted to basically saying that like, we're gonna use this, our power to get expensive bottles of bourbon. keep it all for ourselves, know, is fucking a lot more than that. Yeah. Six people. I mean, come on. You know what I mean? Like you just gotta kind of think about it. So. mean, But this whole thing just kind of brings to light what we said at the beginning. It's like the state controls these areas where the state does control liquor distribution and liquor sales. Like what's the saying? Absolute power corrupts Absolutely. Like the idea that where it's just like, oh, we have hundreds of thousands of dollars of value of material here at our disposal. It's just like, I guess, why wouldn't you do that? I'm not justifying their actions, but I'm saying the way the system is set up, I mean, it is just, it's made to be fucked with Yeah. You know, the way it stands, I mean, I I wanna put myself in their shoes and I want to, I wanna think that I wouldn't do it. but I can Go ahead and tell you. I probably would've. I mean, and here, Here's the way you think of it, If I own any industry If I'm working in that industry. do you Get preferential treatment In that industry, And the answer would be yes. All the time. Like if I own a Car dealership, do I get my car cheaper than you? Yeah. If I own a liquor store, do I get Pappy before you? yeah. Oh yeah. I'm kinda like, I, I mean, I don't like it because it took Bo away bottles that I could've got. or somebody could've got, but it's like. I Also kind of get it. Yeah. At, at the end of the day, the but if it's six people and six bottles. That's nothing. But no, I think it's a lot more than it's a lot more than that. of all, only six people admitted to it. I think it was five plus that main guy. So Which we know it was more than that, but not, that's not one bottle per person that's multiple bottles per people. But I guarantee you there was probably 15, at least 15 people that were getting of it. So I looked into like how it, it happened. Right? So Oregon State run lotteries, So they're online. a lot of these, right? That's how they're doing them. They actually did, from what I could tell, on their website, they actually post when their lottery is. what bottles are going to have in this lottery. So this is the whole state They do November, December, and then March, June, September. So five, a year that I can tell from the past year Of that. So five different lotteries, There's 1,227 bottles, which in my mind Is not, many. no, that's not many at all. It's Less than what 300 each. Each time. Yeah. Do you know how many people entered? not and they're not all Pappy. 20 Oh, no, no. Some of 'em might be a blands, like literally, Or Elmer T Lee. Yeah. Or t Lee. Okay, so 1200 bottles. Roughly how many people do you think, entered those in, in all these five lotteries? how many people for like for each lottery or No, total. I just did a total, Um, I don't know, like there, there's probably like a thousand people show up to like a liquor barn. this is online. There was a, Oh, I was gonna like 10,000. Okay. there's 107,000 people entered. That's insane. what the way you could do it too though, so it's not individuals, right? So Like if I wanted a ball, of Pappy 23 and the ball, of Elmer T, Lee, I could say one chance in Pappy 23, 1 chance. in Elmer t Lee. Okay. So essentially you could do all but still. 1200 bottles. You don't have to pay, you don't have to pay to enter. no pay, not nothing. I could tell. so I mean, you're, you're getting like a one, the best, the best odds I could figure a one in 87 chance. Yeah. Yeah. And you know the liquor barn lottery that I, we won this past year. One in 10, one in 12. Yeah. So it tells you, I mean, it's kind of impossible. to get those. But what these people were doing, they weren't actually taking the bottles from the lottery. So they had what's called, uh, what was it called? here? Uh, Diverted booze, they, they diverted the booze from these like backup accounts. So what they would have is they would have a certain amount of bottles in case something broke. Like If they lost, a Oh, like a backup? the state. The state Oregon. so you're saying the state actually had bottles in Yeah. that's, So they had reserve bottles, essentially. So that's what they were pulling from That's what this, that's what they were doing. So They were saying, Hey, take a Pappy 23 Matt. And pull it to Kendra's store. for me. I'm gonna send my buddy by to get it. Oh. So the only people that really admitted it to it, all of 'em kind of admitted to it. But the main guy that Steve Marks, he's like, yeah, I got myself a Pappy 23. I got this. But also he is like, you know, I got my son's coach. a bottle. Like he was, he was name names, Like they, were doing all this stuff. So that's what was going on. And the bottles in question. So it's Pappy Van Winkle, all of them. Okay. The Elmer T Lee. Um, that was the only two that were named. Okay. Okay. But I mean, I'm assuming B TAC as well. B TAC in general named in there, but they didn't say if it was like any, any specific one or And, we talked about, you know, we talked about Rich, people and crime. With that, you know, we've talked about bourbon, secondary, We got an episode on that, If you haven't checked it out, check that one out too. Uh, probably three or four episodes, ago. but I think that bourbon secondary, you're not necessarily dealing with rich people. Not necessarily. Not necessarily. Um, depends on which side you're on if you're buying. Maybe if you're flipping, you're selling, definitely not. Yeah. But I think that, you know, kind of probably led to this too. You know, if You're, if you're a guy that's in charge of all this liquor and you're thinking, alright, peppy 23 is going for I don't know. Let's see. I wrote down here, so Pappy 23 today, $3,000. plus This is, uh, second Yes. Second and that bottle cost you four 50. It raised up this year. four 50 but still, four 50 to 3000 plus. That's a huge markup when You're thinking if you get wind the secondary, you're like, damn, I'm losing my, ass. really You think about it. You know, I could have had even even the Elmer T Lee. MRT Lee got as much as $300 during COVID. Yeah. Now it's about one 50. That's So again though, I mean, you know, retail and that was 40 now it's 65. You're still, you're tripling. Yeah. Yeah. You know, So I think that's what kind. of led to all this here. I mean, just, it's greed and just Realizing, Hey, I don't, wanna get screwed over. I wanna catch Some of this too. Yeah, exactly. So, um, I, wait, I have a question. Yeah. When the, so when the people were pulling from the reserve and like giving it to their buddy or whatever, were were they getting paid for it? No. They were just letting 'em have it. Now they could have got kicked back so nobody can trace, you Okay. But they were basically think they were just doing it. the idea is that they're in a position of power. They have access to. Powerful gifts as they were. So it's like he said he is got one for his son's. Was it football coach? Son's a sports coach. Let's just use that as a hypothetical example. Let's say his son is second string. He wants to get a spot on the, on the front line, on the, you know, on the starting lineup. And dad's like, you know what? I got a bottle of Pappy here. Yeah. Did you know this goes for$3,000 on the secondary market? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Why don't you take this and tell me what kind of position my, my son's got you. Okay. You see what I'm saying? Like they're abusing system. for Straight up abusing the system. That's what that know Anything about bourbon? If you know just a little bit about bourbon, I'm sure you've heard Pappy, like if you've been around. it, everybody's like, oh gosh, I'd love, to have ball of Pappy. Alright. I can make that. happen. Yeah. You know? Yeah. It's like, yeah, you pulled my dick. I'll pull yours. There's a shake, shaking hands. Something like that. might not do that. but I I'll let you do it. I'll, I'll let you saying in there somewhere. I'm not sure if that's the right one or not. Um, but now here's the thing too. When this came out, so they looked at this, they, they got people talking about it and said they've been diverting bottles. since at least 2015. Yeah. But other people came back and said, no, wait a minute. It's been going on 30 plus years. like a long time. Because again, when you hear Pappy. or hear that you've been, you've been trying to get that for And 30 years ago, I mean, you could get a Pappy. Well, 30 years in my mind since 1985. but It's actually like two. what is, what is it, 2019, 1995. I'm like, Is this why it's so hard to get some of those? bottles though? Because shit like This is, This is, this is not uncommon. this is, this isn't the only reason, but this is a direct contributor. Yes. And that is what kind of brings up like the, the question about all of this, because yeah, six people admitted to it, but you know, there's more people in doing it than that. There's multiple places that have been doing that. A similar issue was discovered in Virginia. Um, another one was discovered I think in Pennsylvania. I North Carolina had one too. Yeah. Where like people were diverting. Yeah. In two, 2022, a former employee of the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority, that's the A BC, alcoholic Beverage Control. Uh, they were selling internal information about the distribute distribution of rare bourbons. They're doing the exact same thing. Uh, another thing happened at the Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, uh, handling whiskey lotteries and, and showing favor or something like that. You know, this goes on everywhere where the state controls and stuff like Even when the state doesn't control it goes on. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. All the time. So it's like, what do you do? Yeah. Well, I mean, what do you do? I mean, I I don't know if there's a fair way to do it if you own a liquor store yourself. A lot of people actually just list them at secondary in the store. Yeah. They can do that. They can. So usually when you have a state run store, it's minimal state, minimal pricing. So you can do whatever you want. Like if you go to stores in Kentucky, you go to our big box stores, and they're Both pretty similar. But if you go to mom and Pops and. you're in Danville, Kentucky or Eastern Kentucky. If you walk in a liquor store, a small one, and you see balls of Pappy, or Btac sitting on the shelves, in my mind I'm already like, that's more than secondary.'cause there's no way it'd be sitting there. Oh, people would buy it. So for example, if I walked in there and I know that George t tag's $200 a bottle, I know a secondary, is a thousand. if I saw that priced at 500, I'd probably be like, okay, I'm gonna go ahead and buy it. Right. Because you can profit I could profit, or, or it's enough. for Me to justify like paying It's a pretty good deal. Yeah. So, but if I go in there and it's been sitting there for, it's a 2022 model, you know what I mean? Bottle, it's like hell, they probably got, it set for $2,000. Yeah. don't even ask. yeah. And A lot of 'em don't have prices. on 'em. So What do you do to combat this? I don't know. A fair way to do it. No matter what you, there's always gonna be corruption. There's always been corruption. I, don't know. so I, I would say, and I think a lot of people have thought this, um, but in order to. Kind of like divert government control, which I think would be a very positive thing. Government is great for a lot of things, but not necessarily everything. Um, I think it, first of all, just abolish a three tier system. Uh, I think a lot of people, some people are doing away with it, but a lot of states just can't fucking let go and that's so annoying. How? Just like they just got con have to have control of everything. If you had a federal mandate to just be like, we don't have to do this anymore. Um, I think that would help to kind of push the narrative that, you know, human beings are responsible enough to handle themselves and their, uh, own choices, but you could also push direct to consumer sales, which is starting to take off. And I think it's a definite boom for consumers. Um. If, if like Btac Buffalo Trace Antit collection comes out, um, instead of having to go through the whole system and do the lobby and stuff like that, Buffalo Trace could just do it themselves. Uh, they have been, they've been actually putting out some now in their distillery where we have like different laws here in Kentucky. Right. I think the, three do that in Oregon, you know what I mean? I think the three tier system is antiquated. Yeah. At best. Yeah. Uh, at worst needs to. be abolished, like you said. But I Do think there's a part. to it that that's needed for some places. I think the distributor is right? right. So like getting these people, getting these places out to market or you know, getting them on the shelves, The other part of that. That should be a voluntary thing though, correct? Yes, correct. But we talk like, you know what that's gonna do if you abolish that you just created bigger monopolies with a buffalo trace? With a heaven hill Sure. because, Well, because they can control the market themselves, right? So if you get rid of the state run stores, You might help this problem but you actually might create. another one. Yeah, that might be the same thing. or worse. kind of true. So there was leave off kind of it, it's true. yeah, Washington State actually, um, had a. A, um, state, state owned, uh, liquor distribution system, and they did away with it. And it's kind of like a, um, a weird, uh, use case here because they projected a certain dollar amount of revenue to be generated, uh, by doing away with state run sales. And they were gonna, um, implement new like tariffs and not tariffs, taxes, uh, and fees So the government. would still make, So they would still make money. So overall, I think it was a benefit. Private retailers grew from 330 to 1600. So job creation went really high. Um, but liquor prices ironically increased. They thought the liquor prices would go down. They increased anywhere between 5% and 15% depending on what it was that people were buying. 50. But, um, one of the thing that kind of like, uh. Tainted that image of liquor prices was their tax rate, because when they were state controlled, there wasn't quote unquote tax, it was all, it was worked into the bottle price. So if you say a bottle was like 50 bucks or something like that, they have, I think the, if not one of the highest, uh, I'll call tax rates. In Washington, it's 20.5%. Washington. Oh my gosh. Wow. So that 25% would've been factored into just the regular Yeah, we're like six here Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It, it's not bad at all here. Um, so then when they actually went to, uh, just like, you know, doing away with the state run system, they just basically tacked that tax was now added on, so that $50 bottle might've still been $50, but it was like, I.$30 plus 20% tax. Do you see what I'm saying? And a lot of people saw this tax as a perceived increase in, in, in price when it wasn't necessarily there all alone. Um, but like, like people, uh, they said like, I guess people that bought high volume alcohol, they kind of attributed to people that drank a lot, actually bought less once they weren't state owned. And then people that were like moderate drinkers, they ended up buying more. So it kind of equaled more availability Yeah. Yeah. It, it kind of evened out, but I guess, you know, heavy drinkers maybe drank less. That's a benefit. That could be a good thing. I'm not Well, some of the things I looked at online with this one, like looking at Reddit threads and just online forums, Facebook groups, whatever, but there's a lot of like people talking about, this, right? So especially from Reddit. And what you would see was talking like, we have about the state run and what they should do, what we could do. But Then you also saw people bringing up kind of what I said. is like, well, Hell, these other stores doing the same thing. Right. Like Mom and pops or backdoor and stuff to like their best customers gonna happen you know, One thing about Kentucky, which I really like, Is that you can't really have a club here. Yeah. Yeah. So you can't spend X amount of dollars and be at this club to be able to buy this bottle. Um, total wines. Try to do that. a couple times. I'll name them, But they can't. Yeah. So, you know, that's, that's great for us because you don't have that tier system.'cause that's actually a bad thing in my. opinion, for consumers. If You have to spend $5,000 a year to be able to buy a bottle of Elmer t Lee. well Hell, I could just buy it for one 50 For Secondary. And just say screw the 5,000. to you. You know, stuff Like that. Well, the I'd love to hear everybody else's opinion. Well, the, I, yeah, I agree. Uh, please comment with what you think, like is the solution here, because again, we're not talking about like, you know, really impactful crimes necessarily, but I mean, I think this is something that needs to be addressed because it just, it just keeps proliferating. If no like perfect solution though. No, there's not. So, No. Yeah. well there's there's corruption everywhere. I, mean, guess it's just like what's a lesser the two. evils or You know, what have you seen that's worked? And we'll pin we'll pin a comment Yeah, seriously. Comment and tell us what you think. Uh, I think it'd be a really good discussion to have and hell, maybe we can make some change. We won't. Nobody fucking You never know. we, can sign Some some, some petitions or something. our own damn club. Fuck yeah. Yeah. Thanks for tuning in. If you liked it, then please share it. If you didn't, then just keep drinking until you do. 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