Letter: Protect NY’s wine and liquor stores

Propositions to drastically change New York’s liquor laws, as called for in a recent op-ed published in Crain's, will cause substantial damage to the state’s more than 3,300 independent wine and liquor retailers. Bills like wine in grocery stores and loose restrictions for ready-to-drink beverages, which contain liquor in a can, consistently disregard the impact on the thousands of small business owners and their employees that make up New York’s retail alcohol industry.These bills are being aggressively promoted by powerful supermarket chains and well-funded business interests. Big-box supermarkets are driven by volume and profit, not by diversity or local economic development. Their selections are dominated by high-margin, nationally advertised brands and private-label products that they control.