The beverage alcohol industry includes companies that market beers and brews (malt liquors), wines and sparkling wines (fermented), and distilled spirits—whiskey, vodka, scotch, gin, rum, and flavoredliquors. Sales of these products, usually through distributors, are limited to those businesses that have obtainedspecial licenses to sell one or more of the above categories of products. For example, if a restaurant has only a license to serve beer and wine, it cannot serve other types of alcoholic beverages.

In the United States, alcoholic beverages and tobacco products are the only consumer goods that are legally restrictedfor sale only to those who are not minors—at least 21 years of age in the case of alcohol or 18 (19 in three states) in the case of tobacco. Sales to anyone under those ages, respectively, are illegal, yet every day thousands of minors buy beer, wine...