Walgreens OKd to Sell Booze, Some People are Angry!
When I last blogged for Brew Indy the hot topic was the potential award of some liquor licenses to drug-/convenience store chain Walgreens. What constitutes a salient fact for the opposition to this proposal is an ever-shifting notion. If one argument doesn’t stick, then they are more than happy to move it around; but the gist of the fracas is this:
Walgreens used to sell booze. Then they stopped. They now recognize that with other competitor chains like CVS, Kroger, Meier and Wal-Mart all selling booze, they need to get back in the game. They applied for licenses. They were just awarded 18. More are almost assuredly on their way. Each of these 18 stores were approved 4-0 by the governing licensing board on a store-by-store basis.
And why shouldn’t they have been?
As I said in my previous post on the subject, more liquor stores cannot possibly be the cause of increased alcohol drinking (except potentially in places where no such outlets are currently located) and consequently cannot be the cause of more alcohol-related crime. Now certainly there can be a correlation between higher crime and a higher liquor-store density. But, despite certain social scientists’ claim to the contrary, that’s almost certainly related to the neighborhood and not the store. That is, poorer places with higher crime are more likely to have more liquor stores (higher demand). Liquor stores do not create poverty or the crime that follows it.
Nevertheless, Neo-Prohibitionist Groups like Save My Sunday, Drug Free Marion County and Marion County Alliance of Neighborhood Associations are very much upset by the notion that Walgreens may soon supply to grown adults the products they wish to purchase with their own dollars.
I don’t have much to add to current story and so post this merely to update readers of this blog that they can now buy their liquor a little more conveniently than they used to.
A quick aside, while I find Save My Sunday and groups like it to be a made up mostly of despicable liars willing to glom on to any claim no matter how untested or unreasonable as long as it remotely seems to support their emotional disgust of liquor, groups like MCANA and even Drug Free Marion County have a lot of goals which I am in agreement with. So I don’t mean to discount the entirety of the latter two groups even as I wish they would drop their efforts against the lawful and responsible selling of alcohol. Their time, efforts, and dollars are all better spent on their more worthwhile projects.
On a related note, as a fan of craft beers and small batch liquors, I’m not super excited that Walgreens is back in the booze business. Their presence increases the amount of shelf space available to macro-manufacturers like Budweiser. It doesn’t cause an increase in consumption of liquor in general but it does shift some of the purchasing from package liquor stores to Walgreens. Since Walgreens doesn’t make a wide variety (if any) craft beers available, it potentially shifts consumption from craft beers to macros. So while I’d rather not see Walgreens in the liquor game, you don’t see me adopting specious arguments to advocate for my position. It just means that in venues like Brew Indy and in person, I will just have to ramp up my honest advocacy efforts.
