The voluntary year-long ban on weekend drink specials offered by a coalition of downtown bar owners is a good start toward responding to questions raised by local officials about possible correlations between discounted drinks, downtown crime and binge drinking problems.
In an effort to disprove a potential link between drink specials and a negative effect on the community, the campus-area tavern owners have pitched a ban which will occur after 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights starting tonight.
This is a good-faith effort on the part of the tavern owners, who are taking a proactive stance in addressing these concerns. We commend these business owners for meeting the city's Alcohol License Review Committee halfway between a permanent seven-days-a-week ban and the status quo.
We urge the ALRC and the City Council to comply with this proposal. If anything, the ban can serve as a litmus test to prove or debunk one theory among the myriad voiced by bar owners, the university and the ALRC Subcommittee on Comprehensive Alcohol Issues, which released a detailed report earlier this year leading to this agreement.
At the same time though, the parties involved should remember that this laudable experiment has its flaws, most notably, the fact that the ban only covers two nights a week makes it a faulty study.
Even more troublesome is the fact that the ban does not include Thursday nights, which marks the beginning of the weekend for many students.
With these defaults, any proof with which either side of the debate emerges a year from now will be inherently shaky.
Still, this diplomatic ban deserves a shot. It may be nothing less than a good start in resolving the long-debated drink special conflict.
