THOUGHTS FROM
LIZA WEISSTUCH
Issue 167 | Whisky Magazine 11
THE CURRENT DYSTOPIA
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I
f you had told me four weeks ago
that hand sanitiser would be the
hot topic in whiskey chatrooms,
at dinner tables, and even in the US
Congress, I would have laughed. Loudly.
Then again, if you had told me four
years ago that Australia and California
βǡ
βǡ
have applauded you and introduced you
to my friend in Los Angeles who writes
for network comedy shows.
And yet, here we on the precipice
of spring. On the early April day on
which I write this, I sit at my desk in
my generally quiet neighbourhood in
ǡβ
and 2.5 miles from Elmhurst Hospital.
If you had told me that on this day,
Times Square would be a ghost town
with a few ambulances and police cars
cruising through intermittently and
Elmhurst Hospital would teem with
an international crowd of people; if
you told me that the Times Square
billboards would perform their giddy,
garish electric spectacle for almost
no one while news teams and cops
set up outside the public hospital, I
would have told you that you have it
completely backwards. And yet, the
hospital is now the centre of national
ǯβ
the US to be overwhelmed by Covid-
patients, leading to extreme shortages
of both ventilators and personal
protective equipment.
Now, each day, instead of hearing the
familiar ambient noise of cars cruising
by and the rumble of the subway on
the elevated tracks a block away, I hear
sirens. Lots of sirens. On the occasions I
do venture outside, I watch the subway
trains pass: each car as empty as the
last. To say that it feels like a living in a
dystopian novel is cliché at this point,
β
Ǥ
Amid all this “new normal” of streets
lined with shuttered pubs, nail salons,
gyms, hardware stores, phone stores
and Starbucks, and headlines that
scream of doom, I am heartened by
the industry we all know and love. No,
dear reader, not because of the delight
I take in a glass of Longmorn 16, and
not because the bottle of Octomore I
take a deep whiff of a few times a day
reassures me of my health. (Reports
show that losing your smell is an early
symptom of Covid-19.) It’s because
of news stories like “Distilleries are
making hand sanitizer with their
in-house alcohol and giving it out for
free to combat coronavirus” (CNN on
Shine Distillery in Portland, Oregon)
and “Anheuser-Busch and Distilleries
Race to Make Hand Sanitizer Amid
Pandemic,” New York Times. And those
are just the national publications. Local
publications tell more of the same.
Of course, no good deed goes
unpunished. As if the logistics of call-
to-action production, sourcing bottles
and creating labels weren’t enough of
a hassle, the evil gnome of American
bureaucracy reared its head.
The industry had to battle to get tax
relief for distilleries engaged in this
valiant, resourceful effort.
From a piece on Politico, “The
provision excusing distillers from
excise taxes on alcohol used to
make hand sanitizer is barely even
a rounding error in the $2 trillion-
plus law passed last week. (The Joint
Committee on Taxation says that it will
cost less than a half-million dollars
over 10 years.)”
This should give everyone pause.
At this moment in Our American
Experiment, a product that’s necessary
and universally useful, yet lacking in
abundance, became suddenly available.
And most distilleries distributed it
for free to hospital workers, to boot.
Eventually the tax exemption was won,
but the regulatory purgatory in which
it hung represents the callousness and
anti-small business sentiment that
American lawmakers are increasingly
known for. The Distilled Spirits
Council said tax relief was vital for
the hundreds of clever distillers that
pivoted to hand sanitisers as other
parts of their business, like tasting
rooms and tours, shuttered. (For the
record: bigger distilleries stepped
up in a big way, too.) It may sound
lofty, but in the end, as a righteous
effort prevailed, the growing distillery
industry embodied America’s
signature resourcefulness and good
samaritanship, demonstrating that
it’s a cornerstone in this country’s
business community.
The growing distillery
industry embodied
America’s signature
resourcefulness
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