On March 19th, 2014, the wine merchant Peder Molin experienced something that nobody should ever have to experience. A police van, filled with armed police, stopped outside of his place of business in Hjorthagen, Stockholm, and performed a warranted search. The bottles of wine in his posession, imported from abroad, addressed and ready to be shipped to their customers, were impounded. Molin was told that he was facing charges of unlawful sale of alcohol, a crime that, in Sweden, can warrant six months or more in prison.
His crime, essentially, was that he had registered his business in Sweden. In early June, 2015, he was sentenced to more than €10,000 in fines, in addition to high legal costs and a commuted sentence.
Swedes have had a long and complicated relationship to the sale and distribution of alcohol. It is a state-run business, and much has been said about the horrors that would happen if sale were to be extended into Saturdays. Then, when that was permitted, the terrible effects of advertising alcohol were raised. When that passed without incident, the next scare was the sale of alcohol from online sources. The facts are that consumption of alcohol in Sweden is shrinking. The doomsday prophets of the past decades are now decrying the horrors of microbreweries and private sale of alcohol. Apparently, e-trade entrepreneurs registered in Sweden are as scary as well.
My name is Breki Tomasson. I am a liberally minded politician and the founder of the Liberal Trade Party in Sweden, and I believe that this kind of enforcement is beyond reproach and needs to be looked at. The monopoly that the state enjoys when it comes to the sale of alcohol needs to end, and this is a fight that I will take as high as it needs to be taken. Along the way, I hope others will join me in helping Peder Molin and other innocent victims of a law that punishes people for nothing more than importing and exporting legal commodities. Should we really punish entrepreneurs for trying their hardest to improve the state of business in Sweden, pay their taxes and find a nische to thrive in?
