Word on the street is that Massachusetts is no fun. At least, that’s what Sen. Julian Cyr said he’s been gathering based on the lack of talk about how exciting the state is.
“I think we do have a fun problem,” he said at a recent hearing for the Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure.
At the same meeting, he proposed bringing back a happy hour on drinks as one step in the process of helping the state “get our groove back,” while making it more “alluring” and “attractive.”
Happy hour has been a decades-long issue in the state. Time-limited discount drinks were banned in 1984 due to drunk driving incidents, and now more than four decades later, Massachusetts is the only state to still prohibit happy hour, according to Cyr. He cited Illinois and Kansas, which lifted their happy hour bans over a decade ago, as examples of states where there were no increases in traffic-related fatalities afterward.
Last year, Cyr renewed efforts to bring back happy hour through the economic development package, which the Senate approved as an amendment. It was then he said that “the idea caught fire.” Now, he’s proposed a bill to bring it back.
Not everyone seems to think the return of happy hour is the right move for the state. The House, in particular, does not seem thrilled, Rep. Tackey Chan told the State House News Service.
“I’ve not received a lot of interest from our colleagues to do happy hours at the moment,” he said last month. “That...
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