Under current Pennsylvania liquor laws, bar and restaurants are permitted to hold happy hours for two hours each day and seven days each week, with no exceptions. Owners say that this inflexibility is a bad business practice in general, but that it especially harms their revenues during football games and similar special events when they are unable to offer drink specials and to so motivate patrons to spend time (and money) at their establishments.

This is why Pennsylvania State Representative John Payne of Dauphin County has introduced a state bill to alter the state's happy hour laws and to give bar and restaurants more freedom in setting their own specials. However, state drunk driving advocates claim that to do so would have a negative effect on bar patrons, and would ultimately cause more DUI accidents, injuries, and deaths.

The proposed law, which was unanimously passed by a House committee, would keep the current restriction forbidding more than 14 happy hours in one week. However, it would change the current mandate, which requires that there be seven two-hour happy hours each week, giving owners the flexibility to divide those 14 hours as they prefer.

According to Payne, to allow greater flexibility in happy hour, which the state defines as any time when drinks are discounted in any way, will be good for Pennsylvania businesses. "I'm trying to let a business run a business," he said. "What's magical about two hours?"

However, members of the Pennsylvania DUI Association are speaking out against the proposed change, claiming that it would lead to an increase in drunk driving and its potentially deadly consequences. According to Wayne Harper, president of the DUI association, longer happy hours would allow "massive amounts of alcohol to be consumed in a single sitting, especially for those on a limited budget."

Source: The York Dispatch, "Bill would uncork happy hours in Pennsylvania", Christina Kauffman, 17 February 2011