Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverage Licensing Blog

A proposal to allow bars and restaurants in Massachusetts to sell discounted drinks is on hold, according to its two backers.

Senators James Timilty (D-Walpole) and Robert Hedlund (R-Weymouth), who sponsored the so-called "Happy Hour" amendment, told the State House News Service they are recommending a conference committee spend the next year evaluating current alcohol regulations.

The amendment, passed in October, was attached to the bill that would legalize casinos in Massachusetts.

Critics, including Ron Bersani, claim bringing back "Happy Hours" would encourage drunken driving. Bersani, whose granddaughter was killed by a drunken driver, said the change would widen the availability of alcohol.

Bill supporters disagree. "I'm not so sure having promotional drinks or free drinks is any major inducement to drunk driving," said Sen. Stephen Brewer (D-Barre), chairman of the Ways and Means committee.

Sens. Timility and Hedlund say the original ban on drink discounts, enacted in 1984, did not cause any measurable change in the number of drunken driving-related crashes in Massachusetts.

WWLP.com reports that Senator Robert Hedlund, a Republican from Hingham, is backing away from his Senate-passed casino amendment that proposes to return Happy Hour to Massachusetts. Instead, he's suggesting that the Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission review its regulations on bars and restaurants and propose revisions.

Hedlund said the six-member casino bill conference committee tasked with consolidating the House and Senate versions of the expanded gaming bill can certainly make changes to his amendment.

The Hingham Republican's change of tone comes after facing criticism from the public for supporting stronger drunk driving penalties and also discounted drinks in bars and restaurants.

Hedlund says that a Happy Hour will not increase drunk driving statistics and it will help bars and restaurants compete with casinos. But he realizes his amendment is unpopular. Hedlund said the intent of his amendment is to help businesses attract customers and create jobs, and he's willing to try an alternative approach to achieve that end.

Police in Foxboro, Mass. arrested a Taunton man who led them on an almost hour-long chase after fleeing the scene of a car crash along Route 495 Northbound last Friday evening.

50-year-old Howard Stockbridge was arrested and charged after rear-ending a Rhode Island man's car on 495 North in Foxboro and then driving away from the scene.

Massachusetts State Police found Stockbridge almost an hour later walking through a parking lot along Route 106 and discovered he smelled of alcohol and "observed that his eyes appeared glassy." Stockbridge told the arresting trooper he was coming from a nearby gym.

However, prior to Stockbridge being placed into custody, witnesses of the accident in which he was involved called the State Police to report the hit-and run.

Police were given the vehicle registration number from the witnesses and through the Registry of Motor Vehicle records were able to trace the truck to a home in Taunton with Stockbridge's name. An eyewitness later contacted State Police to inform them the truck involved had become disabled on Route 495 northbound at the Route 106 Overpass.

It was also reported the driver of the truck was seen fleeing into the woods near Route 106.

Police then began an extensive search of the wooded area where the truck was located and also noted the front end of the disabled truck had heavy front-end damage and was leaking radiator fluid. Inside the truck troopers found multiple empty beer bottles inside a cooler and a cold, but empty, additional bottle on the passenger seat.

Their search ended with Stockbridge being taken into custody and learned while booking him at the Foxboro Barracks that Stockbridge appropriate operating under the influence offense as OUI-7th offense, and also determined that he was "under a 10-year license revocation for a previous drunk driving conviction."

Police said Stockbridge was not injured in the car accident.

Interesting article in the Patriot Ledger about casinos, happy-hour laws, and whether the return of happy hour will have an impact on drunk driving.

District Attorney Michael Morrissey hosted more than 150 educators and police from across Norfolk County at an all-day conference providing strategies to prevent and address underage drinking and other dangerous behavior, according to patch.com

"The time to address underage drinking is before it comes into court as an alcohol-fueled assault, or the car crash that takes a life or causes permanent injury," said Morrissey.

To prevent alcohol sales to youths, the Allston-Brighton Substance Abuse Task Force recently hosted a retailer training for local liquor stores at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center.

Representatives from 11 stores participated in the three-hour session led by Frank Connelly of the Cambridge Prevention Coalition, a community-based substance abuse prevention coalition.

Topics covered at the training included: best practices for preventing youth access to alcohol, information on state-of-the-art scanning technology to detect fake identification, and Massachusetts state law, among others. The following retailers participated:

Allston Food & Spirits, Allston
Bazaar on Cambridge Street, Allston
Chansky's Market, Brighton
Dorr's Liquor Mart, Brighton Center
Hurley's Liquors, Allston
Marty's Big Buys, Brighton
Mod Liquors, Dorchester
Oak Square Liquors, Oak Square
Reservoir Wine & Spirits, Cleveland Circle
The Wine Press, Brookline
Wollaston Wine & Spirits, Quincy

The training was a combined effort between the task force, St. Elizabeth's Medical Center, local schools and universities, the Boston Police. and the Alcohol Beverage Control Commission. Earlier this year, the task force hosted responsible-server training for bars in Allston-Brighton.

Reuters reports that ignition devices that stop drivers from starting their vehicles if they are over the alcohol limit help prevent people convicted of driving under the influence from re-offending, according to a new study.

Re-arrest rates for alcohol-impaired driving decrease by 67 percent after the ignition interlocks are installed compared to drivers with suspended licenses, said the study by researchers at the Community Guide branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Around 200,000 vehicles in the United States are fitted with interlock devices that are used to prevent drunken driving by people convicted of such offenses.

"The very strong indication is that ignition interlocks work extremely well with preventing people with interlocks installed from re-offending," said Randy Elder, scientific director for systematic reviews at Community Guide, commenting on the study.

"In order to maximize the benefits of these interlocks in terms of preventing alcohol-impaired driving and crashes, we need to get more people (using them)," Elder said on Tuesday in an interview. He said the devices' deployment was growing.

Around 1.4 million people are arrested for driving under the influence in the United States each year and 1 million of those are convicted, Elder said.

The devices are typically mounted on the dashboard and include a tube into which the driver blows for analysis of alcohol breath content.

Typically their installation is part of a sentencing requirement or a state mandates it for certain offenders as a condition of acquiring a license. Use of the interlocks varies from state to state with New Mexico the leader, Elder said.

Crashes by people driving under the influence resulted in nearly 11,000 deaths in the United States in 2009, representing one third of all traffic deaths, the CDC said. The annual cost of impaired driving is $110 billion.

The review to be published in the March issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine is based upon a systematic review of 15 scientific studies of ignition interlock devices.

The Associated Press reports that an alcohol-detection prototype that uses automatic sensors to instantly gauge a driver's fitness to be on the road has the potential to save thousands of lives, but could be as long as a decade away from everyday use in cars, US federal officials and researchers said.

This week US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood visited QinetiQ North America, a Waltham, Massachusetts-based research and development facility, for the first public demonstration of systems that could measure whether a motorist has a blood alcohol content at or above the legal limit of .08 and -- if so -- prevent the vehicle from starting.

The technology is being designed as unobtrusive, unlike current alcohol ignition interlock systems often mandated by judges for convicted drunken drivers. Those require operators to blow into a breath-testing device before the car can operate.

The Driver Alcohol Detection Systems for Safety, as the new approach is called, would use sensors that would measure blood alcohol content in one of two possible ways: either by analysing a driver's breath or through the skin, using sophisticated touch-based sensors placed strategically on steering wheels and door locks, for example.

Both methods eliminate the need for drivers to take any extra steps, and those who are sober would not be delayed in getting on the road, researchers said.

The technology is "another arrow in our automotive safety quiver" said LaHood, who emphasised the system was envisioned as optional equipment in future cars and voluntary for auto manufacturers.

David Strickland, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, also attended the demonstration and estimated the technology could prevent as many as 9000 fatal alcohol-related crashes a year in the US, though he also acknowledged that it was still in its early testing stages and might not be commercially available for 8-10 years.

The systems would not be employed unless they are "seamless, unobtrusive and unfailingly accurate", Strickland said.

The initial $US10 million research program is funded jointly by NHTSA and the Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety, an industry group representing many of the world's car makers.

Critics, such as Sarah Longwell of the American Beverage Institute, a restaurant trade association, doubt if the technology could ever be perfected to the point that it would be fully reliable and not stop some completely sober people from driving.

"Even if the technology is 99.9 per cent reliable, that's still tens of thousands of cars that won't start every day," said Longwell. Her group also questions whether an .08 limit would actually be high enough to stop all drunken drivers, since blood alcohol content can rise in people during a trip depending on factors such as how recently they drank and how much they ate.

"It's going to eliminate the ability of people to have a glass of wine with dinner or a beer at a ball game and then drive home, something that is perfectly safe and currently legal in all 50 states," she said.

LaHood disputed that the technology would interfere with moderate social drinking, and said the threshold in cars would never be set below the legal limit.