Opinion | Audit report points to a road to reform.

The Boston Globe · Editorial Board · 2026-11-06 09:00 UTC

State's Prohibition-era liquor licensing favors the wealthy and the politically connected, audit finds.

Massachusetts’ patchwork system of liquor licensing isn’t just antiquated, it turns out it’s also discriminatory — hurting those communities that need an economic boost the most.

The results of the recent report from the office of state Auditor Diana DiZoglio aren’t so much a shocker as a confirmation that a system that requires most — but not all — of the state’s communities to individually beg for new liquor licenses from the state Legislature year after year via Home Rule petitions has created “artificial scarcity” that acts as “an institutional mechanism for economic exclusion.”

The fix is already at hand — as it has been for years — and that’s to treat local officials like the grown-ups they are and allow municipal governing bodies to determine the right number of licenses for their own communities. That process begins by lifting the arbitrary population-based quota system — a system that dates back to 1933 and the end of Prohibition.

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