Maryland grocery stores should sell beer
Thank you for the article about liquor laws prohibiting sales in Maryland grocery stores (“Should Maryland grocery stores sell beer?,” Sept. 6). I do believe that the current situation is out of date, anti-consumer, exists primarily for political reasons and is ripe for reform.
Comptroller Peter Franchot feels grocery stores should stick to groceries and let liquor stores stick to liquor. By that line of logic, one could question why grocery stores can sell items found in hardware stores and have pharmacies and floral departments. Who is looking out for the beleaguered hardware store, pharmacy store and floral shops? By that line of thinking, why are we letting Amazon sell things without even having a store? Yet amazingly enough in Maryland, we have much of the Eastern Shore operating on a different set of liquor sale principles, apparently due to a huge amount of grandfathered liquor licenses. If the world isn’t ending on the Eastern Shore due to grocery store sales, why not let the Western Shore do the same?
What Sen. Joan Conway said, that allowing grocery store sales would spell the end of the small brewer, is an interesting assertion. I suppose she has the data from the Eastern Shore experience to back that supposition up with data? Are smaller brewers shut out of the Eastern Shore market? Or maybe she has data from the 40-plus states that do allow grocery store sales that show how small brewers are just not doing well? I don’t know, but if smaller brewers are doing OK in those 40-plus states, maybe they have lessons we can learn from?
As a 21st century consumer, I think it’s time to readdress this whole thing. If Safeway wants to stock wine and beer, or not, let them make that call and serve their consumers like they do with pharmacies and floral departments. Let the liquor store owner compete for their customer by doing what they must to show they have the better value, and not just because they have a law and the support of politicians that lets them have an iron grip on the sale of spirits.