Plymouth To Vote On Nip Ban Repeal
Special Town Referendum Election on Jan. 13th on Nip Ban; Ban Passed At Fall Town Meeting; Liquor Stores Lead Repeal Effort; The Plymouth County Observer, No. 127.
[Dear Readers, here is a piece on the nip ban referendum election that will be held on Saturday in Plymouth. I also apologize that I have somewhat slowed down the pace on this publication; I have taken a new job teaching English and American society and culture in Boston to learners of English as a second language, most of them migrants, and it has taken a bit of adjustment in other spheres of my life, including this one. Thank you for your patience and forbearance.
With that said, here is the article. — Ben Cronin.]
(PLYMOUTH) — Plymouth will go to the polls on Saturday, January 13th, 2024, for a special referendum election on whether or not the Town should uphold or repeal the ban on “nips” — defined as “any bottle or container of alcohol that is 100 ml or less in size” — that was passed as an article at the Fall Town Meeting last October, and will take effect on July 1st, 2024.
Voters will decide on the following question: “Shall the Town vote to approve the action of the October 21, 2023 Town Meeting under Article 15 whereby it was voted that the sale of “nips,” further defined as any bottle or container of alcohol that is 100 ml or less in size, shall be banned in the Town of Plymouth as of July 1, 2024?”
(Looking towards Plymouth from Duxbury; credit — J. Benjamin Cronin.)
The Town Clerk’s office explained on its website what voting “Yes” or “No” means:
“A YES vote would keep in place the ban on the sale of ‘nips’ in Plymouth that was approved at Town Meeting on October 21, 2023, effective July 1, 2024,” the Town Clerk’s Office wrote.
“A NO vote would allow the sales of ‘nips’ to continue to be permitted in Plymouth and would repeal the ban that was approved at Town Meeting on October 21, 2023,” it explained.
This publication covered the debate over the nip ban last Fall when it came before the Plymouth Town Meeting — the arguments for and against it, as well as the petition drive, led by local liquor store owners and others associated with the alcohol industry, to reverse Town Meeting’s decision, as well as the success of that petition drive, and the subsequent calling of a special referendum election.
As in October at the Fall Town Meeting, proponents of a nip ban argue for the ban on both public health and environmental grounds.
In addition, Yes On 1 Plymouth argues that “nips are a significant source of litter,” noting that “during Town-wide cleanups 14,000 littered nips were picked up around Plymouth over just 4 days[.] A majority of littered nips were found alongside roads throughout Town with high concentrations near schools and liquor stores[.] Every littered nip is evidence of people drinking where they shouldn’t be in our community[.]”
A campaign spearheaded by liquor store owners and others involved in the alcohol industry has emerged to argue for a “No” vote on the nip ban referendum.
Emphasizing that their concerns are with “the bottom line for business,” the Plymouth Coalition to Protect Consumer Choice asserted on their website, protectplymouth.org, that “small business owners will lose 15-30% of their current sales”; that “Liqour [sic] stores may need to reduce their staff levels to correspond with the loss in sales”; and that “Plymouth consumers are not going to quit drinking nips — they're just going to buy their alcohol in other towns. The customer who buys a 12 pack of beer, lottery tickets, and a couple of nips every Friday is not going to make an extra stop — he's going to buy everything at one store outside of Plymouth[.]”
Supporters of Yes On 1 Plymouth include the Plymouth Area League of Women Voters, the Plymouth Open Space Committee, the Plymouth Center Steering Committee, The Sierra Club, The Surfrider Foundation, The Network of Open Space Friends, the Herring Pond Watershed Association, the Six Ponds Improvement Association, Sustainable Plymouth, Sustainable Pinehills, Sustainable Redbrook, the Southeastern Massachusetts Pine Barrens Alliance, Friends of Myles Standish Forest, and Whale and Dolphin Conservation.
The website for the “No” campaign does not list supporters or members beyond stating that the site is “[p]aid for by the Plymouth Coalition to Protect Consumer Choice”; at the same time, the letter to Plymouth voters on the organization’s website is signed “The Plymouth Coalition for Retail Choice Ballot Committee”; presumably these are the same organization.
It has been widely reported by local journalists — including Bobbi Clark, of WATD, Jack Gately, of 1620 Today, and by Fred Thys, of The Plymouth Independent — that Peter Balboni, owner of Pioppi’s Liquors on Court Street in Plymouth, is one of the leaders of the “No” campaign. Indeed, as we reported at the time, the petition for a repeal referendum was placed in sixteen liquor stores across Plymouth.
In fact, as Mr. Thys of The Independent reports, Mr. Balboni placed a full-scale ad in the December 28th, 2023, print edition of The Old Colony Memorial, listed 20 local non-profits, and read: “In 2023 we have supported you. Please support us and Plymouth businesses. Vote NO on 1. Stop the ban on mini bottles.”
However, as Mr. Thys reported, a number of those organizations, including See Plymouth, the Pilgrim Hall Museum, the Plymouth Antiquarian Society, and the Plymouth Philharmonic, were not consulted on the inclusion of their organizations in Mr. Balboni’s advertisement, and were quick to reject taking a position one way or the other on this kind of overtly political question.
The Plymouth Area Chamber of Commerce, on the other hand, was opposed to a nip ban in the autumn, but to take a specific position on this particular electoral question would require approval from its Board, as the organization’s head, Amy Naples, noted to The Independent.
Mr. Balboni explained his views to Mr. Thys of The Independent: “We supported these organizations, and I hope that individuals in those organizations support us,” he said.
I do want to note here that in my own view, whatever your opinion of the ban on nips, the question should be decided on its own merits — not on how much money its economically powerful supporters have donated to worthy causes. Charity in the private sphere does not, and reasonably cannot, entail loyalty in the political sphere. A democratic system requires every citizen to reason upon public things; claims of a nearly feudal-style loyalty, based upon philanthropic spending, is not supportable in such a system. Let a public measure’s virtues or its flaws be the reasons a body politic approves or rejects it — not the past munificence of its supporters or its opponents.
Proponents of a ban pointed to the experience of other towns and cities across the Commonwealth. Because the liquor industry, via its lobbying power, has been able to quash a bottle deposit on nips in Massachusetts at the level of the legislature for more than two decades, it has been left to individual municipalities to enact nip bans, according to Yes On 1 Plymouth. Nip bans have been instituted in a number of southeastern Massachusetts communities, including the Towns of Wareham, Falmouth, Mashpee, Brewster, Nantucket, Oak Bluffs, Edgartown, Fairhaven, and the City of New Bedford.
In Plymouth, Yes On 1 noted on its website that in Falmouth, which has banned nips, nips went from constituting 32% of the litter picked up in that Town during clean-up events to 6% of all litter picked up during such events. Moreover, the group noted that “Chelsea’s ban went into effect in 2018. There were 742 ambulance and fire department responses [in Chelsea] in the year prior to the ban. By 2019, calls were down to 127. Public drunkenness diminished as evidenced by decreases in protective custody: 222 instances in 2018 to 86 in 2019.”
Opponents, however, are not persuaded. “Single-serving candy bar wrappers and chip bags are not recyclable — but that doesn't mean they should be banned, either!” wrote The Plymouth Coalition for Retail Choice Ballot Committee on their website.
“On January 13th, you have the opportunity to Vote No on Question 1 and protect our small businesses and our rights as consumers. Whether you need a small bottle of alochol [sic] for a recipe or simply want to control your intake, you shouldn't be forced to purchase a larger bottle by Town Meeting,” the group argued.
A forum on the matter, with speakers for and against the measure, was held by the Plymouth First organization at Town Hall on the evening of January 11th, and broadcast locally.
Election information can be found on the Plymouth Town Clerk’s website here. The polls will be open on Saturday, January 13th, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Eloquently explained, Ben. The wonder is that with so little time and money, the yes vote almost succeeded. This drama is but a microcosm of the David and Goliath challenges we face as corporate big money skews every political decision.