"Happy Hour" Free For All

As the victim of an 'impaired driver,' the amendment passed by the Senate to allow "Happy Hours" to return is reprehensible and the result of their willingness to genuflect before the Gambling Industry.

Not all states allow FREE ALCOHOL so no imperative exists.

Failing to consider the results in Connecticut proclaims the ignorance of those lawmakers who supported this amendment.

How come you can't sell alcohol to a drunk, but the legislation proposed would allow drunks to continue to GAMBLE?

Patrons could also sign on the dotted line and indebt themselves further to wealthy Gambling Investors, even intoxicated. You have no problem with that?

Does anyone wonder why the ABCC can study this issue for one year, but there is no INDEPENDENT COST ANALYSIS ever conducted?



Hedlund, Timilty back off return of happy hours
By Michael Norton
State House News Service


BOSTON — Two local state senators are backing off a proposal to bring “happy hours” back to Massachusetts.

Sen. James Timilty, D-Walpole, and Sen. Robert Hedlund, R-Weymouth, are recommending that a six-member conference committee negotiating casino legislation authorize the Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission to spend a year reviewing the measure first proposed as a way of leveling the playing field for restaurants and bars competing against casinos, where free drinks will be allowed.

The pair said that they hope changes will be made in the rules governing alcohol before the first casino opens in Massachusetts – bills approved by the House and Senate this fall would authorize three casinos and one slot machine facility.

Critics slammed Hedlund’s proposal to allow businesses to offer free and discounted price drinks as part of the casino bill after the senate shot down a measure to ban free drinks at casinos. Casino supporters say the free drinks allowance will help casinos compete with out-of-state counterparts.

“It’s about fairness and that’s all it was,” Timilty said. “It wasn’t about Animal House, which as I say again, is illegal. This is about putting a few more people to work.”

The senators said they hope the ABCC will review regulations that Hedlund called “arcane and archaic,” with many rules dating back more than two decades. He is part-owner of a restaurant and bar on the Braintree side of Weymouth Landing.

In a letter to the conference committee, the pair said a bar recently was able to offer tequila shots for 40 cents each because it offered the drinks at the same price for seven days in a row. By contrast, they said a regional chain restaurant was recently found out of compliance with rules for offering $1 off locally produced beers on Wednesdays night because the promotion didn’t last a week.

“This illustration shows that while our current alcohol laws may be well meaning, they are also mostly ineffective at preventing binge drinking, and so convoluted that experienced restaurant owners often unintentionally run afoul of the regulations,” the senators wrote.

The senators said Massachusetts has had 27 years to weigh the results of the ban on drink specials enacted in 1984 and copied by only Utah since. Both claimed that ban had not decreased drunk driving, saying the recent Melanie’s Law raising penalties on repeat offenders had had a more demonstrable impact.

The House casino bill didn’t address the alcoholic beverage serving rights of non-casinos, but Timilty said of the Senate amendment, “I have a sense that it’s a non-starter over there. They’re not going to recede to it.”

Hedlund agreed. “This place is not always, but often about compromise,” he said.

In a statement released by Hedlund, Ron Bersani, the grandfather of Melanie Powell, who was struck and killed by a drunk driver and for whom the repeat offender law is named, said he supports the alternative proposal. “I have all the faith in the ABCC to promulgate common sense regulations that balance public safety with a sound business environment,” Bersani said.

Alcohol-related policies have risen to the forefront on Beacon Hill in recent years. After agreeing to assess the 6.25 percent sales tax on retail alcohol sales, the Legislature and Gov. Deval Patrick watched as voters repealed that levy. This session, in addition to routinely passing laws granting alcohol licenses to particular businesses, the Legislature is advancing a bill giving large chains access to more alcohol licenses as they become available. That bill follows the approval last session of the so-called brunch bill, which permits businesses serving brunch to serve alcoholic beverages starting at 10 a.m. on Sundays, rather than noon.