[from Minneapolis City Council proceedings 10/22/04]

PS&RS – Your Committee, having under consideration the application of Lucia Watson Enterprises, dba Lucia’s Restaurant, 1432 W 31st St, for an On-Sale Liquor Class E with Sunday Sales License (upgrade from Wine Class E with Strong Beer) to expire April 1, 2005, now recommends that said license be granted, subject to the following conditions:

a. the licensee shall continue to comply with all Statutes, rules and Ordinances related to the sale and service of beverage alcohol and food.

b. the licensee shall not disproportionately deviate from the sample liquor service menu, as set forth in Petn No 269954 on file in the Office of the City Clerk, and made a part of this report by reference.

c. the licensee shall not feature “shooters”, Happy Hour specials, or other promotions centered on the sale of beverage alcohol, other than wine.

d. final inspection and compliance with all provisions of applicable codes and ordinances. The substitute report was adopted 10/22/04. Declining to vote – Benson.

Approved by Mayor Rybak 10/22/04.

He has, and his position is that we should have a discussion about what the City can do about binge drinking. That’s it. We should gather a group of people – City regulatory staff, public health folks and folks in the bar business – to look at the recommendations from the Public Health Advisory Committee (not “the City,” by the way, but an independent citizen board). These folks will come up with recommendations of their own, which will be made to the Council. At that point, he’ll take a position on specific ideas.

What I can say unequivocally is that no one other than WCCO, not even PHAC, has mentioned “banning happy hour.”

Aliecat brings up an interesting point. One of the recommendations from this task force may well be to better enforce existing overservice regulations.

It’s reasonable for folks to make the claim that the City has no role in preventing binge drinking. I happen to disagree, but it’s a reasonable position. What’s unreasonable is to equate the action the Council has taken so far (which, for the record, is postponing a decision on whether or not to create a task force to develop recommendations to the Council on what the City could do about binge drinking) with “banning happy hour.” And, in my opinion, it’s equally unreasonable to state that any Council Members who haven’t taken a position against regulating any drink special that anyone anywhere has ever included in a happy hour are out to ban happy hour entirely.

You need not describe “what I’m like” to this group, Rat. Speak to me directly. These folks know both of us. You and I, we know each other, and they know us.

Overlord? Heh! Ask Mrs. Lungs about that!!

(grin)

I do appreciate the “Benevolent, well meaning,” Rat. I hope I can live up to those kind words…

But to equate — exclusively — binge drinking with happy hours leads one to an erroneous conclusion. Students will binge drink anywhere. Anywhere.

If you favor the prohibition of happy hours, then you must also favor the regulation of off-sale purchases which should not be kept immune from the same pricing limitations the City Council wish to levy upon on-sale establishments.

Because, otherwise, you’ll just spread the problem out … like street walkers who scatter to the side streets when the police step up prostitution patrols on main streets.

With existing laws in place, it is possible for a responsible bar owner to control the amount of drinking that is done on his property. There are no such controls easily enforced when the binge drinking is done on private and, sometimes, public property unless death is involved.

If I go into the store, and by a 6 pack of beer, the store has no idea whether I’m going to drink it all by myself in 10 minutes, or a day, or even a couple of weeks.

If I go to a happy hour, and buy 3 2 for 1 beer by myself, since I can only consume them on the premises, the bar still has some control and responsibility.

No, my hypothesis was simply this: There may be a connection between deeply discounted drink specials happy hours and drunk driving. Nothing more. If you want to expand it, you might through in various assaults, vandalism, etc. 

That would probably be simple enough to test. Look at which bars offer these specials, and then look at drunk driving stops in the vicinity during, and/or shortly afterwards.

As a control, you would compare those numbers to areas around bars without the drink specials, or even the same area during times without the drink specials. The later would be useful as a control for demographics, which would be another factor you would want to control for.

Once you have that data, and if the hypothesis were confirmed, what steps might be taken (if any), is a completely different issue, and is not addressed by the hypothesis.

Public beatings?

No,. the thinking that went behind these proposals was probably, “we’ve got some number of students that are killing or injuring themselves (and putting other people at risk) by binge drinking. Is there something that we might do as a society to address this issue.