Direct-to-Consumer Alcohol Shipping is a Gateway to Underage Drinking

New York State legislators are considering loosening the laws that would mitigate the expertise of state liquor store retailers, trained professionals who understand the rules and regulations of selling wine and liquor online.

These experts, who gatekeep a controlled product like alcohol and ensure its appropriate sale to consumers, will be marginalized in favor of massive online corporations that do not understand the industry the way liquor store owners do.

The sale of counterfeit alcohol has flooded online marketplaces. Fraudulent liquor, often linked to organized crime, renders consumers clueless about the amount of alcohol or types of chemicals in the beverage they’re drinking.

Yet there is a bill being pushed in the New York State Legislature that would legalize the direct shipment of liquor to state residents at least 21 years old. The bill’s sponsors, rushing to pass it before the legislative session ends June 6, argue that greater alcohol accessibility will help restaurants and small businesses by removing the costs of working with distributors.

That claim is grossly misguided. Leaked documents revealed that Amazon is behind a multi-state lobbying campaign aiming to weaken alcohol distribution regulations so that it can carve out new revenue streams. And Suntory Global Spirits, the Japanese alcohol conglomerate that owns Kentucky whiskey maker Jim Beam, disclosed in a New York State lobbying report its desire to sell its alcohol brands direct-to-consumer.

Cowering to massive global corporations isn’t a good-faith attempt to help small businesses — it’s an insult to the beverage industry's union workforce, along with some 4,500 retail wine and liquor stores that collectively have long served as its brand ambassadors across New York.

More urgently, highly regulated substances like alcohol must always be monitored closely to protect public health. Minors trying to circumvent identification checks while searching for the lowest possible prices don’t truly know what they’re getting. Is it cheap alcohol or something far more dangerous? Given the increased prevalence of deadly fentanyl in all kinds of drugs, we must be hypervigilant about allowing online ordering of alcohol products.

Additionally, underage binge drinking remains a huge problem among college and even high school-aged students. There are too many stories of alcohol-fueled accidents with devastating consequences for families — about 4,000 young people (under 21) die from excessive alcohol use each year.

Fatal or debilitating accidents would likely become even more frequent if alcohol laws gave way to direct-to-consumer sales.

Look at the surging popularity of Ozempic, which is feeding an online black market of weight loss drugs around the world. New York influencers are vying to capitalize on the trend, using social media to peddle fake Ozempic injections that have caused life-threatening infections and injuries.

The current alcohol system relies on three tiers of checks and balances, specifically because alcohol is a controlled substance. Currently, local wine and liquor stores ensure compliance with the law at every step.

Loosening our state’s alcohol laws to allow direct over-the-internet sales is fraught with danger to minors, according to both the Journal of the American Medical Association – Pediatrics (JAMA) and the Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission (MABCC).

In 2011, JAMA published a North Carolina investigation that found 45% of direct-to-consumer shipping orders placed by minors were successfully delivered; and of those completed orders, only 49% of vendors used any age verification methods at all.

Massachusetts regulators found the same problem occurring in their state in 2023.

Minors as young as 15 were able to place and receive online alcohol delivery orders through direct-to-consumer entities. State researchers confirmed that NONE of the deliveries labeled as alcohol required recipients’ identification at the delivery address.

Both investigations, more than a decade apart, concluded that order and delivery methods deployed in those states created significant harm to society and that greater care must be taken in evaluating or altering alcohol control laws designed to protect our children.

Identification checks, which are taken seriously at retail wine and liquor merchants, can serve as an essential line of defense. If these crucial checks aren’t happening, then minors might see direct-to-consumer deliveries as a turnkey way to bypass the age laws.

These days, the authenticity of liquor products circulating online is no guarantee. Criminal prosecutors recently brought fraud and counterfeiting charges across 13 states determining customers are unknowingly being sold bootleg alcohol.

Concealed in a web of delivery and return addresses, customers often do not know they have purchased counterfeit alcohol until it is too late. The complex maneuvering of fraudsters offering counterfeit alcohol sold online poses an absolute threat to public health and safety.

Investigators determined counterfeiters are sourcing their bootleg alcohol from overseas, including China, shipping it to a proxy address somewhere in the U.S., and then relabeling the shipments as products originating from within the U.S.

These operations are in direct violation of federal and state alcohol taxation laws. Regulators remain a few paces behind the counterfeit producers and distributors exploiting online sales and shipping methods.

The effort to expand direct-to-consumer alcohol in New York is dangerous. Courier services simply dropping packages at customers’ doorsteps might be speedy and convenient, but a red line must be drawn between unchecked online marketplaces and controlled substances that are a proven danger to our children.