New Bill Would Allow Grocery Stores to Sell Cocktails in a Can

A bill that would allow Oregon grocery
stores to sell cocktails in a can, made from distilled spirits and containing
up to 14% alcohol by volume, dropped in Salem on Feb. 24.

House Bill 3730, sponsored by state Rep. Rob
Nosse (D-Portland) at the request of the Northwest Grocery Retail Association,
comes with a sweetener. The grocers are proposing a high rate of taxation: $8 a
gallon, which is more than twice the tax rate in California.

Nosse emphasized that benefit in a
statement on the bill. “Allowing grocery stores to sell ready-to-drink
cocktails gives our homegrown businesses greater market access, expanding
consumer choice and generating new tax revenue that will directly fund youth
alcohol and drug addiction prevention and treatment programs,” he said.

In the byzantine world of Oregon alcohol
regulation, grocers are currently allowed to sell as much beer and wine, hard
seltzers and wine-based cocktails as their customers will buy (including
products containing more than 14% alcohol). But they cannot sell canned
cocktails made from a hard liquor base.

Canned cocktails — which people in the
industry also call “ready to drink,” or RTDs — are currently the province of
the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission and sold through 282 state-chartered
liquor stores. (RTDs are sold in grocery stores in 31 states.)

The Northwest Grocery Retail Association,
which has long sought to
get in on the fast-growing RTD market segment, says its members’ 792 grocery
stores have vastly more refrigerated shelf space than state liquor stores. And,
according to NGRA polling, customers are eager for broader, more convenient
distribution of the product.

While sales of liquor and wine have
stagnated and even declined in some categories following a
COVID-fueled bacchanalia, canned cocktail sales in Oregon are growing rapidly,
even with limited shelf space.

Here are the OLCC’s statistics:

Credit: Source: Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission

The bill is not yet scheduled for a
hearing but is likely to face opposition from liquor store agents and the other
interest groups that have historically opposed grocers’ attempts to change OLCC
policy, including craft brewers and beer and wine distributors.

The bill has already drawn criticism from
a lawmaker who has long raised concerns about the negative health consequences
of drinking.

State Rep. Tawna Sanchez (D-Portland),
who co-chairs the budget-writing Joint Ways and Means Committee, says she will
oppose the bill.

“HB 3730 is clearly designed to vastly
increase the sales of hard liquor products that are largely targeted to younger
people, and to have those sales take place outside of Oregon’s careful system
of regulating distilled alcohol,” Sanchez said. “This is a terrible idea with
serious implications for the health and safety of Oregonians.”

—This story was produced by the Oregon Journalism Project, a nonprofit investigative newsroom for the state of Oregon. Learn more at oregonjournalismproject.org.