The days of nip bottle sales on Martha’s Vineyard may be numbered.
Following in Falmouth and Nantucket’s footsteps, the select boards in Edgartown and Oak Bluffs each voted this week to put a proposed nip bottle ban on their annual town meeting warrants. The two are the only Island towns with package stores, potentially halting nip sales on Martha’s Vineyard altogether.
The miniature alcohol containers colloquially known as “nips” have come under scrutiny recently out of concern for both littering and drunk driving along Island roads. Looking to put up a unified front, the Oak Bluffs select board has previously said it will consider a ban on nips if Edgartown does.
“People throw them out of their cars because they don’t want to get caught with them,” Edgartown climate committee chair Julia Livingston told the select board in the meeting on Monday. “These things are so small they get into storm drains.”
Edgartown select board member Arthur Smadbeck said the decision to put the ban on the warrant came after the board received dozens of correspondences in support of a warrant article. Edgartown town administrator James Hagerty added that he had received a petition on Friday with over one hundred signatures from residents across the Island.
The considerable interest, Mr. Smadbeck said, prompted the board to put the issue to a vote at town meeting April 11.
Not everyone spoke in support of the proposal. Several Edgartown business owners, including Rosewater Wine and Spirits owner Julia Tarka, took umbrage with the warrant article’s current language, which bans any alcoholic beverage in a container less than or equal to 100 milliliters. Under this language, many single-serving cocktails — a sizable portion of Rosewater’s sales — would be banned, she said.
“I would suggest a rewrite of the current language to resemble Nantucket’s,” Ms. Tarka said.
Nantucket’s ban is limited to petroleum-based alcoholic beverage containers, leaving the door open for glass bottles or cans of a similar size.
Some Oak Bluffs businesses made similar pleas last month, with one even offering to have their own internal deposit on the miniature bottles.
The Oak Bluffs select board, which voted Tuesday to put the ban on the town meeting warrant, believes that the prohibition could help decrease town litter without posing serious financial issues for package store owners.
“Falmouth said that they have noticed a decrease in the amount of nips they were picking up,” said town administrator Deborah Potter. “They also didn’t have issues with any vendors with compliance in not selling them.”
Mr. Hagerty said that, at this point, if people did want to see the warrant article language change, the select board would need to receive a citizen’s petition with over 200 signatures from Edgartown residents. Mr. Smadbeck responded that any further debate can take place at town meeting this spring.
“Let the voters at town meeting decide,” he said.
Edgartown’s annual town meeting will take place at 7 p.m. on April 11 in the Old Whaling Church. The Oak Bluffs annual town meeting is also at 7 p.m. on April 11 and will be held at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School performing arts center.
Riis Williams contributed to this article.
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