Last week the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) inched toward a more rational future, throwing out its ban on happy hour advertising. The commission has discussed the small change for months and last Thursday ruled that, yes, bars and restaurants in Oregon may now be allowed to advertise outside their business that they have a happy hour.
The OLCC says that enforcing the happy ban was impossible, especially when bars could be advertising their sales on Twitter or their own websites which the OLCC investigators don’t have time to check constantly. The agency wound up enforcing the rule sporadically.
But, with typical bureaucratic finesse, the OLCC has kept the rules complicated:
In an effort to help prevent price wars on alcoholic beverages to be consumed on the premises, the rule prohibits advertising both the time period (i.e.: 3-6 p.m.) and a price or discount (i.e. $2 pints or 25% off) in the same advertisement.
Oh well. If you have one of those iPhones, there’s always Cocktail Compass.
Will the OLCC please just die already?
Plenty of other states get by just fine without the interference of archaic temperance-movement-era bureaucracies trying to legislate morality via liquor sales. We’d be better off without ’em. Anyone who wants booze can get it, right now anyway, even with all these ridiculously overcomplicated rules and regulations– so what’s the point? 75 cents off a well drink isn’t going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
The “price war” fears are silly too. We already have plenty of bars willing to sling PBR for $1.50 or less, and it’s not impossible to find cheap cocktails for a few more quarters. Perhaps I’d understand the paranoia if Portland were merely a small college town, but it’s a lot more than drunk 20-somethings rioting about sports– it’s a mid-sized metropolis full of adults who, for the most part, are pretty goddamned responsible.
Let’s just confuse the potential customers! Mwahahaha!
Cocktail Compass is the envy of all my friends NOT living in Portland.
Thank god they overlooked that OTHER institution advertising booze prices…the grocery store. No concern about drunkards discovering their blessed PBR is pennies per ounce at New Seasons, Fred Meyer or…*gasp* SAFEWAY! OMFG! And you can take that booze HOME! AGH!!
How fucking stupid
/points finger at OLCC
Imagine the extra money the state would have if they got rid of this “archaic temperance-movement-era bureaucracy”???? I’d love to know how much money they generate as opposed to spending?
“Cocktail Compass is the envy of all my friends NOT living in Portland.”
Why because they can’t find the other apps that do the same thing, more accurately, under more platforms?
You can say what but not when? You can say when but not what? Fucking nonsense.
I am convinced that there is a legislator somewhere who has their entire campaign paid for by MADD to keep the OLCC in power. I can think of no other logical reason why this ridiculous double-speak bureaucracy persists.
It’s like the OLCC Uncertainty Principle.