Could Salem Soon Ban 'Nips' Single-Serve Alcohol Bottles?

SALEM, MA — The Salem City Council unanimously backed a push to ban the sale of single-serve alcohol containers — commonly referred to as "nips" — in an order to the Licensing Board to discuss and vote on the prohibition.

City Council Alice Merkl introduced the order at Thursday's meeting that she argued was based on the "harmful environmental impact that they have."

"They cannot be recycled because of their size and contamination issues and because of their lightweight they end up everywhere, all over the streets," Merkl said.

She said that the issue spans the city and is not just prominent in one neighborhood or ward as she urged the city to join Chelsea, Newton, Falmouth, Wareham and Mashpee in banning the tiny bottles.

While several City Councilors lamented the inaction at the state level to expand the bottle bill to include the single-service sizes, Councilors appeared to agree that inaction of the state should not prevent Salem from moving a ban on its own.

"There has been so much pressure put on the state to pass a bill that would have deposits on nip bottles and it goes nowhere," Councilor Patti Morsillo said. "So I think we are at a point where this is where we need to go to deal with it as a community."

Morsillo said the benefit of instituting the ban through the Licensing Board and not a full city ordinance is that the Licensing Board could more easily tweak the regulation at a later date based on new information or unintended consequences.

"From what I have seen in doing cleanups in Ward 3 it is incredible the amount of nip bottles that you find in one block," Morsillo said. "It's just incredible. I don't know who is drinking all of this stuff — and it's not even very good."

Councilor Robert McCarthy recalled that the city did ban the bottles temporarily during the Halloween season in the past and found that those purchasing alcohol simply moved to larger bottles. But other Councilors noted that October in the Witch City is an outlier in many ways and that the goal of the ban would be more geared toward the environment and general community appearance than necessarily a public health statement.

"Our cities are littered, tremendously, with nip bottles," City Councilor Conrad Prosniewski said. "Our sewers are clogged with nip bottles. I don't think anybody will dispute that. Anybody who walks through the streets of Salem — even outside the liquor stores you can find nips discarded on the street and on the sidewalk."

Councilors Andy Varela and Lev McClain both said that nips are easily concealed alcohol beverage containers that likely contribute to drinking and driving and underage drinking in the city.

"I think a lot of residents would be happy to see these banned," City Councilor Ty Hapworth said. "Just because they are all over our city streets, and in our gardens and our planters — in my gardens and my planters, specifically — and I think a lot of folks would appreciate some action on this."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)