Hey neighbors, check out the kid-friendly flavors nip bottles come in these days – variety packs are cheap. How about coconut, lime or banana rum, or vodka in grape, orange, strawberry or watermelon? Trade with your friends! There’s vanilla, berry & honey whisky, Bailey’s chocolate cherry, and butterscotch, rootbeer & peppermint schnapps. Perhaps you’d like to try “Kinky” liqueur, passionfruit rum, or “Skrewball” peanut-butter whisky, dedicated to “misfits, black sheep and skrewballs”. Judging from the litter, cinnamon “Fireball”, with the little red devil on the label, is the most popular.
Some people say the nips issue is about freedom. People in towns that have already banned nip bottles are still free to buy, drink and bake with alcohol. Liquor stores there are still free to sell alcohol, and their employees are still at work. Those communities are more free of drunk drivers and litter on their roads. No one needs the freedom to drink while driving and fling the evidence out the window. No one needs the freedom to buy alcohol for kids, and kids don’t need tiny bottles of hard liquor that fit in their pockets. And no one deserves the freedom to market alcohol to children.
What greedy corporations paid for the “no” signs that claim they want to “protect Plymouth”? I don’t believe they care about our community at all. I don’t believe their anonymous claims that local package stores would lose up to 30 percent of their business. I’m proud of a certain local package store that only has a tiny display of nips, and a constant stream of customers. The “no” campaign also claims nips are recyclable, but the company that picks up my trash and recycling says otherwise.
The “no” campaign claims we haven’t had a voice, that a “minority” of Town Meeting members “imposed” the nip ban on Plymouth. This issue was raised by Plymouth citizens and was voted for by the majority of the Town Meeting members who attended the recent public Town Meeting, [and] who were elected by a majority vote of Plymouth residents.
To whomever stole the “Yes on 1” sign from my yard last night, and my friends’ yards the night before: you won’t stop us from voting. To our neighbors and friends: won’t you join us?
Sandy Fosgate
Nips are marketed to kids and people who drink while driving
