Chief Public Defender Doug Hartig believes that removing home brewing from the CNMI\u2019s list of criminal offenses would ultimately save the CNMI money.<\/p>\n
in his comments on Rep. Ivan Blanco\u2019s (R-Saipan) House Bill 21-27, which seeks to lift the criminal offenses that come when caught home brewing alcoholic beverage, Hartig noted that doing so would ultimately save the government with prosecution money.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe current law regarding alcohol production does not have a home brewing exception found in all other American jurisdictions,\u201d Hartig said. \u201cUnlike the 50 states and all other territories, it is a criminal offense to make tuba, wine, or beer at your house for your use.\u201d<\/p>\n
Current law only exempts the use of unlicensed wines for religious ceremonies.<\/p>\n
Hartig pointed out that, under indigenous tradition, certain types of alcoholic beverages are brewed and used for personal consumption such as tuba, or coconut wine. <\/p>\n
According to the OPD, the CNMI is the only jurisdiction that imposes criminal offenses on people caught brewing their own alcoholic beverages. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe CNMI is the only U.S. jurisdiction where a person can go to jail and be fined [up to one year and $1,000) for making a small [amount] of beer or wine or tube for his own use,\u201d Hartig wrote. \u201cRight now, anyone making a small amount of tuba could be prosecuted just as if someone was importing and selling liquor by the boatload. I do not think the resources of this office, the Office of the Attorney General, police, and courts should be spent in dealing with this type of prosecution.\u201d <\/p>\n
HB 21-27 would allow personal brewing in batch quantities of no more than 10 gallons for private use and not for resale without a license. This language, according to Hartig, corrects the \u201cinadvertent error\u201d in current CNMI law.<\/p>\n
As of publication, the bill is still in the House Commerce and Tourism Committee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chief Public Defender Doug Hartig believes that removing home brewing from the CNMI\u2019s list of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[257],"class_list":["post-304877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-nmi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}