The Octagon bar managers are responsible hosts ... Yeah, right.
The promotion in today's ODT (Thursday, November 5th) offers a $6 taxi voucher to patrons who buy 6 alcoholic drinks within 4 hours. In my opinion that's binge drinking they're promoting.
There's also that law prohibiting alcohol sales to any drunk person. It would be difficult to argue that any patron buying themselves drink #6 was sober.
Possibly the Octagon bar managers have redefined "a drunk" as "a person with no money left to buy more booze"? I hope the Dunedin liquor licensing authorities stop this promotion.
And the bigger issue: it's time New Zealand stopped believing this wretched propaganda that drinking alcohol is fun and sophisticated. Look around the Octagon at 2 a.m. Sunday morning... it's only sad losers who need to get boozed to socialise.
We taxpayers pay the costs of cleaning up the mess.
How could a responsible promotion be run in the Octagon?
Keep the free food and live bands. But limit the volume to 75 dB max. Why? Because research shows the louder the noise, the more people drink. Obvious, really. If you have to yell to talk to the people at your table, you stop trying to hold a conversation and just sip your drink instead.
Keep the price of alcoholic drinks the same as always. It's irresponsible to encourage patrons to drink more alcohol by lowering the price. But promote non-alcoholic drinks- e.g. $2 lattes, $1 lemon lime & bitters.
Keep the taxi voucher promotion: make it that buying any drinks (including non-alcoholic) to a total value of $24 gets you a taxi chit. After one or two alcoholic drinks with food, many people will still be below the legal alcohol limit for driving but it's safer for them and everyone else if they take a taxi home.
Try it folks. You'll attract a crowd, and they'll still be happy at the end of the evening. Half the alcohol means twice the fun.