PLYMOUTH − Nips of alcohol won't be sold in Plymouth starting in July.
At the fall town meeting Saturday, the ban of the 1.7-ounce bottles was approved by a 72-67 vote. The ban will take effect July 1. 1 Liter Glass Liquor Bottles
Litter and the ease with which the nip bottles can be tossed out while driving were two of the reasons people said they wanted the ban. Substance abuse, drunken driving and the environmental impact of the plastic containers were also among the concerns raised during the discussion before the vote.
Volunteers collected 14,000 empty nip bottles during a recent four-day town cleanup, said Ken Stone, who helped draft the town meeting article for the open space committee, which sponsored the article.
Plymouth joins a handful of Massachusetts towns that have nip bans, including Chelsea, Newton, Wareham, New Bedford, Mashpee and Falmouth. There has been little push to impose the ban in other South Shore towns. Some at the meeting said the ban should be statewide.
Restaurant customers bring nips into eateries to spike their drinks, creating potential liability issues, people at town meeting said.
Advocates noted that Plymouth imposed a smoking ban in restaurants before it became a statewide ban. A plastic bag ban, passed a few years ago, reflects a similar local push to be proactive in the town’s commitment to the environment.
“The package stores in Plymouth are wonderful neighbors,” said Precinct 15 town meeting member Art Desloges. ”This prohibition is not a penalty because of some infraction. We need to change what we buy, what we sell and how we use them.”
Supporting the ban was not a given for speakers who identified themselves as environmentalists.
“I am a very environmentally conscious person and recycle everything we can possibly recycle,” Precinct 12 town meeting member Karen Petracca said. “Of all the litter around me I find in my daily walk, I find just as many bottles and cans on the street as I do nip bottles. If we're not going to ban all these, I do not believe we should ban the nips.”
Precinct 8 town meeting member James Grillo said part of the appeal of nips is their small price tag.
“So this is also targeting a socioeconomic class,” he said.
He and others said they would support the ban if it were part of a wider prohibition against selling single-use containers, such as water bottles, as some Cape Cod towns have done.
Precinct 7 town meeting member Dave Golden said the ban could be dangerous.
“No matter what we do here today, the people who want to drink are going to find a way to do it. They will absolutely either buy a larger container, which means that they're going to drink more, or they're going to go to one of our neighboring towns,” he said. “I would say that the public health concern presented by either of those two scenarios is worse than what we have now.”
Precinct 10 town meeting member Brian Fitzgerald said the ban is a good start to help reduce waste.
1.75 Liter Bottles “We need something more, and this is what's in front of us now. To stand here and reject an opportunity to reduce waste and litter is a fallacious line of thinking,” he said. ”The crunching under my feet should be autumn leaves, not bottles of empty Fireball whisky. But that is what we have here. Yes, we want more. We need more. But this is what's in front of us and it's time to start to reduce the litter to make this town better.”