Costco backing state initiative to open up liquor sales

The Seattle Times reports:

Costco Wholesale stores in Washington will begin collecting signatures next week to put an initiative on the ballot in November that would take the state out of the liquor business.

Initiative 1100 would allow businesses in good standing that currently sell beer and wine to also sell liquor, and it would eliminate price controls and allow volume discounts.

The push comes more than two years after Issaquah-based Costco, the country's third-largest retailer, lost most aspects of a court battle to change the state's beer- and wine-distribution rules.

Several legislative efforts aimed at overhauling the system failed to make headway.

As Professor Mark Perry would say: markets in everything.