Project Summary:
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services names alcohol one of the most commonly used substances in the state. Wisconsin adult residents lead the nation in the level of alcohol use in the past month (63.1% for Wisconsin vs. 52.2% for the U.S.) as well as binge drinking in the past month (20.3% for Wisconsin vs. 16.9% for the U.S.). The intensity of alcohol use has created a significant public health problem in Wisconsin. In 2022, 3,331 people in the state died due to an alcohol-attributable cause, more than double the number of opioid overdose deaths of Wisconsin residents in the same year. From 2017 to 2021, over one-third of Wisconsin driving deaths involved alcohol-impaired driving. Yet Wisconsinites appear less concerned about the harm from binge drinking than the rest of the U.S. adult population. Excessive levels of drinking found in Wisconsin are likely influenced by both its drinking culture and its permissive drinking laws, and those laws likely play a role in the alcohol-related harms in the state.
Increasing the length of hours during which alcohol can be sold to consumers has been shown to be contrary to public health research and goals and could potentially increase negative outcomes associated with excessive alcohol consumption in areas such as alcohol-related hospital admissions, drunk driving, alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes, violent crime, assaults, and unintentional injury. In contrast, alcohol policies that decrease the hours and days when alcohol can be sold have been associated with reduced levels of alcohol consumption, reduced hospital admissions for alcohol intoxication, and reduced levels of violent crime. Most alcohol licensing decisions in Wisconsin are made at the local level by each municipality (city, village, or town), including the issuing or denial of alcohol licenses for specific businesses or other establishments for on-premises or off-premises consumption. However, state law sets the hours during which alcohol cannot be sold (called “closing hours” in Wisconsin) as retail sales to consumers.
The current closing hours for businesses licensed or permitted to sell and serve to customers for on-premises consumption (e.g., bars, restaurants, and taverns) are from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. Monday through Friday and 2:30 a.m. to 6 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday, although they are extended for daylight saving time, and there are no closing hours on Jan. 1.
Recently, a natural experiment occurred wherein the state increased the availability of alcohol by increasing the length of hours it could be sold during one work week in July, during the 2024 Republican National Convention (RNC), as Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was officially chosen as the site of the event. In anticipation of the RNC, which was set to occur from Monday July 15 through Thursday July 18, 2024, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers included in his 2023 budget proposal a request for bars in 14 counties, including Milwaukee County, to be allowed to stay open until 4 a.m. during the convention, rather than the standard weekday closing time of 2 a.m. The rationale given for this change was based on the idea that the estimated 50,000 people coming into Milwaukee to attend the convention would have a chance to go out and explore Milwaukee and beyond, and tourism would theoretically benefit from having extended hours to do so given the timing of convention-related events.
This project will examine and document the decision-making that resulted in extended operating hours of on-premises alcohol outlets for five days during the 2024 RNC, to investigate and record which municipalities from counties other than Milwaukee opted out of the extension, and collect more detailed data in Milwaukee to understand both the local uptake of the extension in the area hosting the RNC, as well as how this policy affected local businesses and neighborhoods. This project will also investigate the implementation process and the potential identification of impacts of this alcohol policy at the local level.
This project is timely because developing a better understanding of the reasons both for and against implementing such as temporary change to the alcohol law can yield relevant information that can inform future decisions about similar extensions or changes during large-scale events. On the surface, the extension of operating hours for on-premises consumption is contrary to research related to public health practices as it relates to alcohol. Yet, it is important to document both what led up to and what took place during this temporary extension period. In addition, another goal of this seed project is to determine whether this alcohol policy change produced sufficient local uptake of the operating hours extension to make it reasonable and practical to conduct a subsequent study to assess whether there were measurable changes in alcohol-related outcomes such as alcohol-related traffic collisions, hospitalizations, or crime during the period of the extended operating hours.