It seems that Utah's current restrictions on liquor consumption are confusing tourists who come here to drink as well as residents who live here for the same reason.

To the rescue comes Utah's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control and its five-person commission, which is appointed by the governor. As a rule-making body, the commission is to correctly interpret and implement state liquor laws and also make recommendations for needed reforms.

Recently, the commission held public hearings and got an earful from the drinking community. The consumption assumption for the hip crowd is that the liquor market should be deregulated, making partaking a much less-complicated process.

Lawmakers who created these quirky laws, mostly representing the "peculiar" non-drinking people of Utah - the so-called "lifeguards who don't swim" - have operated on another assumption: The commission operates to actually control consumption.

What has complicated this otherwise protracted and recurring epic struggle between Utah's hip crowd and its "peculiar" people is the state's very popular governor. Typically, he sides with the "peculiar" people. In this case, he sides with the hip crowd in wanting to deregulate the liquor market, and he, of all people in the state, is in a great position to do so through his commission appointments.

The hip crowd should be feeling pretty good about this turn of events.

Unfortunately, while the governor is the boss of the rulemakers, he has little to no real power over Utah's lawmakers. As fate would have it, a vast majority of them not only identify with the "peculiar" people, most of them remain solid in that identity.

And so, there you have it - a very popular governor, elected by the "peculiar" people, cozying up to the hip crowd who didn't vote for him on an issue that the "peculiar" people are most peculiar about, and having to face lawmakers not seeking, nor sensing the urgent need, to be equally liberal about Utah's liquor laws.

Of course, all is not lost for the governor. He is very popular, you know. There is a gambit he can play to convince enough of the "peculiar" lawmakers that being that way, in this case, really isn't in the state's economic and cultural interests. In other words, promoting drinking just makes good money sense and is wonderful for public relations.

He could impress upon them that, well frankly, it's embarrassing for the "peculiar" people, who already have enough scorn cast upon them from greater and more spacious places, and that just this one time they might join with him, as their very popular governor, as "reasonable" people and not undo what he has wrought.

Then again, a majority of "peculiar" lawmakers could remember their cultural roots, reclaim legislative intent hijacked by the commission, and remind themselves that Utah's liquor laws are not very peculiar at all - 18 million Americans live in counties where not a drop of liquor can be purchased and not one of those counties is in Utah - nor are they very complex given the regulatory example of Utah's smoking laws.

They could reassure themselves that, indeed, being peculiar has its merits that are worth expressing, unashamedly, in law.

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* PAUL T. MERO is president of the Sutherland Institute, a conservative public policy think tank based in Salt Lake City.