The Ban of Beer Sales at College Games Defies Basic Economics
This Fall, the University of Maryland is joining about 32 other universities that already permit the sale of beer in the football stadium during football games. It's about time, but why now?
In 1991 the late Roger Faith and I published a paper in Public Choice entitled "Temporal Regulation and Intertemporal Substitution," a title not as descriptive of the study as I would desire now. The study focused on the effects of banning alcohol sales and use inside football stadiums during games. The ban at Arizona State University was imposed in order to deter so-called binge drinking, along with automobile accidents before ("pregaming") and after ("postgaming") games. Gathering police reports prior to and after games in a vicinity near the stadium on game days/nights, and taking into account the intensity of the competition, time of game, other events near the city, and other factors, we found that accidents increased after imposition of the ban. Moreover the blood alcohol levels were higher for those stopped and tested after the ban, compared to before the ban was imposed.
Why this result? Alcohol dissipates in the body at a pace that won't allow one to sustain a high for a 3-hour game. Thus if one consumes a great deal prior to the game, a buzz can be kept for a half or more of the game. But, to bring the buzz up to pregame levels requires some binge drinking during halftime if patrons are allowed to leave the stadium and reenter with a ticket stub, or immediately after the game.
Selling beer at football games is a smart way to reduce binge drinking. Instead of the ritual of aggressively getting trashed on mystery drinks prior to the contest, students can consume beer during the game. None of the schools that lifted the bans reported increased problems as a result. A number have experienced decreases in alcohol related problems.
According to Sports Business, at many universities people would leave the stadium at halftime and rush back to their tailgate in order to consume significant amounts of alcohol to get their buzz on again. So by selling beer and terminating the pass through West Virginia, among other universities, has experienced a reduction in the number of problems involving unruly fans.
Although the policy makes sense, typically it is not being undertaken because it reduces crime and accidents. Instead, universities have reinstituted beer sales because they bring in considerable revenue at a time when athletic programs are desirous of new funding.
Yet some campuses are moving in the opposite direction. Dartmouth University, for instance, has plans to ban drinking on campus completely as a method of "reducing" alcohol abuse. It's a nice sentiment, but prohibition quite simply does not work. During the 1920s prohibition, people switched from beer to harder liquor because the same buzz could be transported much more easily with hard liquor.
The attempt to prohibit alcohol sales actually encourages reckless drinking. In that case, rather than pursuing rules that will be aggressively ignored by college students, policy ought to be geared toward the elimination of age limitations for drinking in concert with allowance of beer sales at games.
