EDITORIAL: Beer and wine in grocery stores is inevitable, but how it will play out is not

State lawmakers have had their chance to mitigate damage to small-business liquor stores across the state when the sale of beer and wine in grocery stores becomes the inevitable reality that it is.

It may not be too late.

A coalition of grocery stores announced this week they could at long last make good on a perennial threat to ask voters if they’d like to be able to get full-strength beer and wine at their local grocery store.

Of course they would. The consuming public would love to have a chance to just pick up beer and wine at the same place they get shampoo and frozen pizza. And who wouldn’t want to vote for a change in state law that will almost certainly make beer and wine cheaper? Grocery giants will have big purchasing power to buy low and will without doubt use beer and wine sales as a way to get shoppers in the store.

The chief complainants of the change are the independent owners of about 1,500 liquor stores across the state, an odd lobby of loose-knit but persuasive business owners who’ve held the sympathies of state lawmakers for decades.

Colorado is one of but a few states still living under post-prohibition era “blue” laws that forbid any entity but liquor stores to sell full-strength beer, wine and spirits. The newly arrived to Colorado are usually quick to question and scoff as to why they can’t buy beer and wine at the grocery, drug or convenience store like they did back home.

But when approached by consumers who want that change, state lawmakers have loyally snuffed such measures, throwing their allegiance to small, mom-and-pop liquor stores who have a monopoly on that market.That’s going to end. There’s no doubt that grocery stores will quickly collect enough signatures to get the change on the 2016 state ballot. And there’s no doubt it will pass as profoundly as did the move by the Legislature in 2008 to allow liquor stores to open on Sundays.

Now, liquor sale changes will be crafted by the grocery stores. Had state lawmakers realized what was inevitable, they could have set the ground rules for the change to ease valid concerns by liquor store owners.

It’s not too late. State lawmakers can negotiate with grocery stores to create an interim committee to either adopt or refer to voters ways to get wine and beer in grocery stores. The grocery coalition said they would give lawmakers one more chance to make the change before going to voters themselves.

State lawmakers could create a “compromise” plan that would similarly allow liquor stores to offer some convenience foods, snacks and liquor-related items that they currently are prohibited from selling. Likewise, the state could limit hours for grocery-store liquor sales to allow for exclusive early and late sales in liquor stores.

But the sale of beer and wine in liquor stores is coming. And if it comes at the behest of grocery store chains such as Kroger, Safeway and Walmart, local liquor store owners will lose much bigger than if they get a seat at the table to draw up new rules through state lawmakers.

Gov. John Hickenlooper or state party leaders must act swiftly, but most importantly, they must act.