Only In Massachusetts is an occasional series where Patch tries to find the answers to questions about life in Massachusetts. Have a question about the Bay State that needs answering? Send it to dave.copeland@patch.com.
Massachusetts is not the only state that bans bars and restaurants from running happy hour promotions, but it was the first to do so on Dec. 10, 1984.
The story starts in September 1983, when the state's legal drinking age was 20 and Kathleen Barry, 20, of Weymouth, met friends for happy hour at a Ground Round restaurant in Braintree. Barry and her friends won a "name that tune" game and were given pitchers of free beer as a prize. As they left the restaurant, they piled into a 1975 Chevrolet sedan for a joyride around a parking lot. Barry fell from the car driven by a man who had drank "at least seven beers" and was dragged 50 feet, breaking her neck, arms and legs.
Barry's death sparked immediate outrage. The outrage intensified when the local licensing board didn't issue any violations. The bar had, after all, not broken any rules. George McCarthy, then chairman of the Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission, held a series of hearings and called waitresses working the night Barry died to testify. The driver, who eventually pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide, had drunk 7 to 9 mugs of beer in a 2.5-hour period.
McCarthy asked the manager of the restaurant to stop running the promotions and was told "I'll have to think about that."
McCarthy drafted up new rules and held a series of public hearings around the state. The new rules did more than just ban happy hours. They limited individuals to buying two drinks at a time. They banned bars from giving away free drinks and hosting drinking contests. The proposed rules would also make it impossible to get a pitcher of beer for less than two people in Massachusetts, and included the provision saying "no container of beer or mixed drinks shall exceed 16 ounces."
What seems most remarkable when looking back from today's everything-is-worth-arguing-about political climate is that the rules passed in 1984 with near universal support. McCarthy had expected pushback, but those hearings mostly had people —including dozens of bar owners — getting up to speak in favor of the proposed rules.
"Once the movement got started, the bars were saying, 'Look it, we only do it because the guys up the street do it'," McCarthy said.
Dukakis Weigh Safety Against Over-Regulation
One of the people who was most reluctant to see the ban go into effect was the man who eventually signed them into law. Despite having lost his own brother to a hit-and-run driver in 1973, then Gov. Michael Dukakis said he was reluctant to put more regulations on private businesses.
But ultimately — and after a Hyde Park drunk driving crash killed a family of four on Christmas Eve 1983 — he said keeping happy hour drinkers off the roads outweighed the drawbacks. He approved the rules the same week the state House of Representatives passed a bill that raised the drinking age to 21 from 18, effective June 1, 1985.
"Yes, we are trying to regulate how people drink," Dukakis conceded at a news conference after he signed the new happy hour rules into law in November 1984. But "some of our worst disasters take place over the holidays. We'd like to reduce them, and these regulations go a long way toward that goal."
The new rules took effect on December 10, 1984, a Monday. On the Friday before, bars in downtown Boston tried to lure downtown office workers for one, last workday happy hour.
"I'm so glad it's going," Mary Callahan, a then 23-year-old a waitress at Houlihan's in Faneuil Hall Marketplace told the Boston Globe on December 7, 1984. "People are crazy. They order 10 or 15 drinks at once, pay for half of them, and don't even finish."
While it's hard to separate the rules passed in Massachusetts and other states from the raising of the legal drinking age around the same time, they appear to have worked in combination. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates 32,000 people died in drunk driving crashes in 1982. Last year, that number was 10,511.
Recent Happy Hour Push
There's been more opposition to the rules in recent years than at the time they were enacted. When the late Mayor Thomas Menino pushed to make Boston more attractive to entrepreneurs and tech startups in 2011, younger leaders urged him to push for the state and the city to ease up on its "anti-fun" liquor laws. A state senator from Weymouth even introduced a bill to repeal the ban, saying it would put bars and restaurants on a level playing field with the casinos that were being about to be legalized at the time.
"I guarantee you that if happy hours are restored, dozens of people will be killed or maimed on our highways because of it," Dukakis told Wicked Local in 2011.
Along with Massachusetts, Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Maine, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Utah and Vermont still have happy hour bans in place. When Illinois and Kansas dropped their bans in 2015, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker reiterated his support for keeping the Massachusetts rules as is.
It should be noted Boston magazine reported Baker made his comments while sipping "what appeared to be a Harpoon" at a Q&A event called "Political Happy Hour."
Dave Copeland is Patch's regional editor for Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island and can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).
"Hour" - Google News
March 29, 2021 at 09:21PM
https://ift.tt/3wbxrUI
Only In Massachusetts: Why Cant I Go To Happy Hour? - Patch.com
"Hour" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2WcHWWo
https://ift.tt/2Stbv5k
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Only In Massachusetts: Why Cant I Go To Happy Hour? - Patch.com"
Post a Comment