U.S. native tribe accuses big beer companies of bootlegging

Either a town of 11 people is drinking 13,000 cans of beer a day, or brewers are looking the other way as their product is bootlegged onto a First Nations reserve. If you’d like to give the good folks at Molson Coors and Anheuser-Busch the benefit of the doubt, it’s the 11 residents of Whiteclay, Nebraska, who have been downing all that booze. But a lawsuit by the Oglala Sioux tribe is alleging that the brewers have been deliberately selling beer in the tiny town’s grocery stores despite a ban on alcohol in their nearby reservation. And rather than assume the thirsty Whiteclay residents consumed nearly five million cans of beer in 2010, it seems plausible, as the president of one social organization said, that the brew is being bootlegged on their reservation—a place with a history of alcoholism. The brewers haven’t yet responded, but it will be interesting to hear their explanation of how such a small group of people could supposedly soak up so much beer. Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »