Students drink. In Madison, they drink often and in large quantities. Students drink to get drunk. Students are poor.

These are all factors making Madison campus-area bars awash with drink specials.
Commissioned by the Task Force on National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism College Drinking, a new study reveals drinking by college students ages 18-24 contributes to an estimated 1,400 student deaths, 500,000 injuries and 70,000 cases of sexual assault or date rape each year. It also estimates that more than one-fourth of college students that age have driven in the past year while under the influence of alcohol.

The report has garnered significant national attention, as recent headlines and television pundits are begging the question, “Just how significant is this culture of binge drinking, and what can be done to solve it?”

One of the significant and contested proposals to quell student interest in the bottle is restrictions on nightly price reductions bars use to attract students — two for one Long Islands, flip nights. . . drink specials.

NIAAA report

The report acknowledges it may be promising to ban drink specials, but it stated a more comprehensive evaluation is required for the study to fully endorse such an approach.

The report indicated any restrictions on establishment pricing or advertising shows promise in reducing an overriding, community-wide cultural pretense associated with binge-drinking, but not to address individual or “dependent” drinkers.

The aspect of the report addressing the drink specials issue reads, in part, as follows:

“Research shows that as the price of alcohol goes up, consumption rates go down, especially among younger drinkers. Because many bars surrounding campuses attract students by promoting drink specials, restrictions on happy hours have the potential to reduce excessive consumption off campus.”

What Exactly is “Binge-Drinking”?

The RWJ Project and the university, in an effort to improve the campus-area culture regarding alcohol consumption, have adopted the definition for problematic binge drinking as defined by the Harvard School of Public Health.

The study defines binge-drinking as having five or more drinks in one sitting for men and four or more drinks in one sitting for women. “Frequent” binge-drinkers binged on at least three occasions in the previous two weeks.

Susan Crowley, executive director of Madison’s chapter of the RWJ project, said the Harvard Study’s definition of binge-drinking is not arbitrary, but it is not a concrete term.

“A sitting is not well defined in hours,” she said. “It’s a measure that produces some sociological impact of drinking and is not meant to reflect or connote any specific drinking amounts on an individual level. It is meant to look at broad patterns.”

Statistics from the study show college students have continued binge-drinking at about the same rate over the past 10 years, despite increases in alcohol-education programs and substance-free on-campus housing.

About 44 percent of college undergraduates reported binge-drinking at least once in the two weeks prior to being surveyed, according to findings in the 2001 College Alcohol Study, released March 25. The study also indicated that, of students who drink, 70 percent engage in bingeing.

Local ALRC member and tavern owner Dick Lyschek said the interpretation of binge-drinking is excessive.

“If someone goes to a football game and has two beers before and two beers after, and it’s a woman, they binge-drink?” he said. “It’s a ludicrous definition. They created this hysterical term to create a furor over their studies.”

The study also said there is polarization in drinking. There are more students abstaining, yet students who do drink do so more heavily. More students are living in substance-free housing on campus, rising from 17 percent in 1993 to 28 percent in 2001.

In response to the culture of binge-drinking prevalent on and around the UW campus, administrators and city officials proposed adjusting the prices of drinks to discourage over-consumption.

“A certain amount of literature looks at alcohol prices and how changes can affect consumption. It is very clear that reduced prices increase consumption and vice versa and also [increases] incidences of other negative occurrences such as sexual assault,” said Kathleen Lenk, Coordinator in the School Public Health at the University of Minnesota, an expert in the field of alcohol-related social research.
The Economics of Drink Specials

Drink specials are designed to bring patronage to bars and owners contend they are often successful, not as a means of filling the bars on weekends (which tends to happen anyway), but rather of bringing life to sleepy establishments on weeknights.

“Most bars are losing money on weekdays just by being open,” said Dick Lyschek, owner of Bullfeathers, 303 N. Henry St. and member of the ALRC. “Running drink specials is a way to cover some of your variable cost. It is just a matter of trying to maintain cost and not lose so much money. You run a deep discount to get people through the door.”

Ross Johnson, owner of State Street Brats, said his establishment uses similar logic.

“Certainly if you were to call people at the business school, it doesn’t matter if you’re talking used cars or whatever, pretty much every one does it. Let’s say on a given night we offer a discount on woodchuck. And, on that night, 20 percent of the people come in and order woodchuck; 80 percent of the people don’t, but that 20 percent don’t come by themselves. The whole idea is to get people through the door. It’s a business tool.”

Johnson said that while most bars do not live and die by drink specials, disallowing them goes beyond economics to also affect the ability of the bar to advertise in general.

“They haven’t gone far enough yet to mandate price controls on all of our products, but to some extent it will have a chilling effect on advertising and revenue,” he said.

Opponents of drink specials claim adverse economic effects of drink specials can be offset by increased viability in a more welcoming downtown area.

“We’re not anti-business,” said Jonathan Zarov of the RWJ project. “When this idea first came up, a lot of bartenders said [it’s okay] as long as it is across the board. Maybe it was different when things were at a very theoretical stage and this wasn’t as close to being a reality. I don’t know of anybody who’s said that recently, though.”

Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, said the regulation of drink specials would be an unprecedented step in city history.
Possible city action

The ALRC subcommittee report, on which ALRC will base its initial recommendation, includes the following language with respect to the student drinking issue:

“Evidence of super-intoxication is not anecdotal. Significant numbers of calls for emergency service to tend to incapacitated individuals destined for detox, legions of drunks besieging the city at bar time, domestic mayhem such as spousal and child abuse, reckless drivers without licenses due to previous OUI’s, and pools of human effluent on streets and sidewalks are clear indications of a problem.”

Ald. Tim Bruer, District 14, said the term “super-intoxication” was not rooted scientifically but intended to imply a state of inebriation that might leave a person incapacitated.

Local tavern owners contend the wording is an attempt to exacerbate the problems presented by the downtown bar scene.

“Legions of drunks besieging the city at bar time? Domestic mayhem? Pools of human effluent on the streets? Look, we’ve gone beyond the bounds of ‘we’ve got some issues’ to a giant creative-writing exercise,” Johnson said. “If this is the case, why isn’t there a moat around the Overture Center? If you’re being besieged by legions, that conjures up to me the opening scene of ‘Gladiator!’ You want to talk about keg delivery and dealing with the bums, fine. But let’s keep this in perspective.”
Verveer said the city’s immediate agenda on drink specials is not perfectly clear, but that additional discussion will continue on the subject.

“The ALRC has a fairly long agenda, and it is hard to really get your arms around this report,” Verveer said. “The recommendations affect more than downtown. Banning drink specials seem[s] to be going in the direction of banning them citywide, not just downtown.”

A citywide drink-special ban has been viewed by committee members so as not to single out downtown area establishments exclusively.

“We’re trying to balance the needs for an entertainment venue with the industry,” Bruer said. “We recommend greater opportunities for folks that are underage, a much safer environment and we’re pressing for greater responsibility in terms of management by the tavern owners.”
Johnson said regulating equality between bars should be left to the laws of economics, not city officials.

“It is not the city’s job to maintain a level playing field. I’m here over fifty hours a week and I work as hard as I can for my establishment. There are other places [where] their management or owners don’t try as hard. Trying to regulate this kind of equality is just out of touch,” he said.

However the debate is resolved, city officials and tavern owners agree the status quo is unlikely to be preserved.

“There are different ways that such an ordinance can be drafted and worded. What really will be critical will be how the final ordinance is drafted,” Verveer said. “I think it’s fairly likely to pass in some form.