This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Usually, the people we disparage for not being able to handle liquor are people who drink. But in Utah, we also have to worry about the people who write the laws governing the sale of alcohol — most of whom do not personally indulge — because it is they who don't know when to stop.

Earlier this year, leaders of the Utah Legislature commanded that the state — which holds a monopoly on the booze business — close a handful of its liquor stores. The official excuse was a staff audit suggesting that running fewer stores would cut costs without a significant loss in sales.

Because customers facing a shuttered liquor store in one neighborhood would have no alternative other than to seek out another state liquor store elsewhere, the theory was, costs would go down while revenue remained substantially the same.

But, even though only one store was actually shut down, the state seems to have overplayed its monopolistic hand. Increased business at other outlets has made up less than three-quarters of the revenue that was flowing into the store at 1457 S. Main St. in Salt Lake City. The loss amounts to $120,000 in reduced revenue just since the store closed its doors on March 31.

So, now that the numbers don't work the way lawmakers expected them to, at least one of them has come up with a different rationale. Senate President Michael Waddoups now says that saving, or losing, money isn't as important as the promise that having one less liquor store might mean a reduction in underage drinking and/or drunk driving.

But if statistics for those social pathologies were to go any lower in Utah, you'd need a microscope to find them. The state already ranks dead last in both drinking by teens and the percentage of auto fatalities caused by drunk drivers. Those are stats that Utahns can be proud of.

But the fact is that those few who abuse alcohol will follow the liquor stores wherever they go, while those who just decide not to buy any liquor this week were never a threat.

Add the legislation placing ridiculously low limits on the number of bar and dining club licenses available in Utah, and the financial hemorrhage gets worse.

The state loses. Local governments lose. The school lunch fund, which gets a part of the state's liquor profits, loses. Employees, landlords and other businesses who benefit from the foot traffic brought by liquor stores lose.

The only winners are those who may be pleased that, for the first time in political history, when someone says it's not about the money, it really isn't.