Let’s nip sales of tiny liquor bottles
As Connecticut lawmakers debate the future of nips, there's nothing that's really half-full or half-empty.
The tiny bottles typically go straight from full on liquor store shelves to empty, all too often on the sides of roads within blocks of their place of purchase. No one sips nips. Too many people chuck the empty bottles with abandon.
Some stakeholders are pitching the possibility of letting towns opt out of selling them. That's a half-empty, and half-full, remedy. We prefer getting rid of them entirely. What's the case for continuing to sell them? Retailers argue that the small bottles lure customers in search of a quick hit, who then decide to add a few larger bottles to the bag.
That's not good enough. A clear assessment of the situation was offered by Glastonbury Town Council Chair Tom Gullotta, who said, “you're selling shots at a very affordable price.”
Lawmakers tried to nip the problem three years ago by throwing on a 5-cent surcharge that fueled funding in municipalities for environmental programs.
Even Larry Cafero, a former Republican leader of the Connecticut House of Representatives who heads the trade association Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of Connecticut, acknowledges that the bottles remain “all over the place” despite what he deemed successful street sweeping programs and the like.
The legislature's Environment Committee now wants to grant cities and towns the ability to ban the sale of liquor bottles that are under 50 ml.
Which will reliably raise the counterargument that buyers will just do their businesses in neighboring towns, or even states.
Cafero is advocating for lawmakers to create stronger oversight of how towns use the funding from nips sales.
“No town is an island where if you ban it, it just won't exist,” Cafero argues.
That's not true if they are not available anywhere.
Which is the bottom line. Nips serve no positive purpose. They essentially exist so they can be quickly consumed and discarded leaving no evidence of open containers in vehicles. They just become a problem for everyone else who has to pick them up and deal with the consequences of how they pollute the land and waterways. It doesn't help that they aren't effectively recycled.
Rhode Island has tried and failed to get rid of them. Connecticut would have a hard time as well, given that they sell in the millions every year.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't try. That eliminating them would enhance the environment is reason enough.
More importantly — and this is the part no one seems to want to explore during these debates — it will reduce the number of drunken drivers on our roads. That should be a priority given recent DUI statistics. Towns in states that banned them reported fewer alcohol-related admissions in hospital emergency departments.
So when it comes to small liquor bottles, let's think big.