I love the press releases of the smaller booze monopolies in smaller jurisdictions. Like this one from New Brunswick dutifully cut and pasted without comment or even apparent thought by the local branch of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:

... president and chief executive officer Daniel Allain says the numbers are in line with expectations. He says beer sales and store visits were expected to drop because of a deep discount on beer last year that saw high volumes of sales for 2011, totalling about $4.5 million.

Sounds like people are drinking less there, right? Patient readers will recall that this eastern Canadian province has been grappling for years with the reality that two of its four borders offer cheaper beer while the other two consist of salt water. But rather than suggest that there was a failure in past efforts to stem the tide of those wishing to buy beer at reasonable prices elsewhere, the CBC story and the liquor store's story line presented seems to imply that New Brunswickers are actually buying less beer and visiting beer stores less often. But that makes no sense. See, the monopoly did launch a new discount scheme for 2012. It must not have panned out all that well.

It would be interesting if some journalist, say, from the CBC were to do interviews at border stores and try to estimate the volume of beer that free thinking NBers were buying over the line. But that would take a decision to do that. Wonder why that decision is not being made.