Dartmouth’s new hard alcohol ban, announced by College President Phil Hanlon on Thursday, will likely lead to an increase in sales for some local businesses, while others are unlikely to see changes, local business owners and town officials said.
Hanover town manager Julia Griffin said that businesses that sell beer and wine, such as Stinson’s Village Store and CVS Pharmacy, will likely experience increases in sales, while establishments such as Pine, Molly’s Restaurant, Murphy’s on the Green and the Salt Hill Pub will likely see increased patronage.
Pine restaurant in the Hanover Inn will continue serving hard alcohol, despite the fact that it is owned by the College, Griffin confirmed.
Local bars will have to be more vigilant to ensure that fake IDs are not used, Griffin said, as more underage drinkers may attempt to use them to purchase hard alcohol.
The two state liquor stores in Lebanon and West Lebanon will also experience less bulk purchases by Dartmouth students, Griffin said. She went on to say that in the past, when penalties for providing hard alcohol to underage students were less severe, the state liquor stores would frequently see Dartmouth students buying entire shopping carts full of alcohol, ostensibly to distribute to underage friends. More severe penalties will likely discourage such large purchases, however, and though students of age will still buy from state liquor outlets, the amount purchased at one particular time would likely be smaller, Griffin said.
Griffin said she did not believe that the ban would have a negative impact on any local businesses.
Another issue that could emerge as a concern for business owners and workers is over-serving patrons of any age, Griffin said.
“The last thing you want to do from a restaurant or bar’s perspective is assume any liability with a DWI that might occur because somebody got ahold of too much alcohol served by a liquor-serving establishment,” Griffin said. “Those are the nightmares on the part of bars and restaurants that serve hard alcohol.”
Murphy’s owner Nigel Leeming said that business at Murphy’s would not be affected by the ban.
“It won’t affect us in the slightest,” Leeming said “I think life will go on as normal.”
Only a third of Dartmouth students are of age at any given time, Leeming said, and therefore the proportion of students obtaining hard alcohol at Murphy’s will remain constant because they closely monitor their servers to ensure that underage customers are not served alcohol.
“Are people going to stop drinking hard alcohol in the dorms and start coming downtown?” Leeming asked. “I don’t think so.”
As for the use of fake IDs, Leeming said Murphy’s staff can properly distinguish between an authentic ID and a fake one, and it is unlikely that any fake IDs would make it past them.
“Somebody uses a fake ID here, I call the cops and they get arrested, I don’t care,” Leeming said. “We get a reputation here that you have to follow the rules, and therefore people do follow the rules because we enforce them.”
Leeming said that as long as downtown businesses enforce the rules surrounding alcohol consumption, there would not be problems. He went on to say that local businesses have licenses and employees to protect, and have a legal and moral responsibility to uphold their standards surrounding serving alcohol to patrons.
“It’s difficult to compare what goes on at the College and what goes on here because we have different viewpoints on what this all means,” Leeming said.
Dartmouth students almost never cause problems at Murphy’s, Leeming said, saying that student groups and students visiting with parents were respectful and law-abiding.
Stinson’s owner Jack Stinson said that he anticipates more students coming into his store to buy beer and wine, and that other sanctioned but formerly less popular drinks, such as hard cider, will likely see an increase in sales.
“We are the number one provider of hard cider, which is sweet, and liquor is sweet but if students can’t drink that maybe they’ll be drinking more hard cider,” Stinson said.
Banning hard alcohol may cause the College’s campus culture to return to that of the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, Stinson said.
“There wasn’t as much hard alcohol on campus,” he said. “There was beer, a ton of beer. They drank a lot more beer than students drink now by far. By Wednesday night, the whole campus drank beer all week. Maybe what’s happening is they’re moving back to that.”
Representatives from Pine, CVS and the Salt Hill Pub declined to comment. Representatives from the Canoe Club and Molly’s Restaurant could not be reached for comment.
