Vote no on Question One

To the Editor,

The circumstances that brought about Question One remind me of the movie "Wag the Dog." Multibilliondollar food conglomerates from Europe, the parent companies of Stop and Shop and Hannaford are spending upwards of $5 million to change the liquor distribution laws in this state.

Suddenly after 7 years of satisfactory service, a multimillion dollar attack on the retail liquor industry has many people thinking we need to fix something that isn't broken.

Since this ballot question was written to accommodate all members of the Food Association's lobbying group, it had to include licenses for every convenience store, many gas stations and all drug store chains. The result is a horrible bill that would literally double the amount of liquor outlets in the state.

The National Transportation Safety Administration statistics clearly show that if Question One passes, the resulting expansion of retail liquor outlets will cause drunk driving deaths in Massachusetts to increase by 127 percent. Are we so easily led by slick advertising, that we would sacrifice 185 of our daughters, sons, wives or husbands to the violent death of a drunk driving accident for the sake of getting a cheap bottle of wine at a gas station? I hope not, please vote no on Question One.

James P. Kraskouskas

Princeton