In the height of the pandemic, in an effort to protect Michigan breweries, changes were made to distribution laws that prevented out-of-state breweries to ship beer direct to the consumer. Unfortunately, due to the definitions of beer written into the state legislation, this also prevented out-of-state breweries from shipping non-alcoholic beer directly to consumers, as well. This was a casualty of good intentions.

Within Michigan, there is no direct competition to be concerned with in the non-alcoholic beer market. Michigan breweries have yet to add anything to the current selection of non-alcoholic beers available, and therefore would not be hurt by the allowance of direct-to-consumer shipments of non-alcoholic beer.

Furthermore, as the pandemic has also shined a light on the habitual drinking habits of many consumers, people are now seeking out alternatives to their standard alcoholic beverages and it is both unfair and against the idea of a free market to not allow those people to have the options made available to them.

Michigan is only one of six states that has their laws worded in such a way that these non-alcoholic breweries cannot distribute to the consumer. The broad generalizations and definitions are both harmful to the consumer and unreasonable to to expect wholesale distributors to make up for.

We are asking that Michigan State Legislature revisit the sweeping distribution laws passed last year and either change them to not include non-alcoholic beer or change the definitions of beer to segregate non-alcoholic beer from regular beer.