It started with a walk.

Council President Stephen Tamang posted on Facebook about what he found on a recent neighborhood walk: empty vodka shooters, scattered along the route like they’d become part of the landscape. It read like a small, personal observation. It wasn’t.

That Facebook post has become the starting point for what Tamang told the city’s Legal and Finance Committee on August 12 needs to be a real, sustained push — not a symbolic one.

Tamang was direct about the limits of what’s possible: there is no single ordinance, he said, that fixes this. But research has to start somewhere, and he’s asked the city’s legal department to begin looking at what tools — ordinances, zoning conditions, or otherwise — the city actually has available.

No one on the committee spoke against the idea in principle. The disagreement, to the extent there was one, was about jurisdiction.

Ward 3’s Kevin Maher raised it directly: “I really believe that if you want to do something, it has to be a state law,” he said, suggesting the state’s own Legislative Research Council take on the research rather than the city’s legal department alone. Maher noted that roughly ten states already have some form of deposit on bottles, and said he wished the conversation had been “a little more focused on what could be done” at that level. He also mentioned that he and Tamang have a meeting with a state senator next month.

Asked what the timeline looks like, Tamang was blunt: there isn’t one. It just needs to start.

Not a Revival – a Reckoning

It would be easy to read this as a second attempt at the ordinance Rapid City considered in 2024, which would have restricted early-morning alcohol sales hours before the full Council rejected it.

Police concerns were part of what drove that effort — Alderman Josh Biberdorf, who sponsored it, has said he was responding in part to what he was hearing from RCPD — and Tamang’s account at this meeting tracks with that same throughline. But that framing undersells what’s changed.

The problem Tamang is describing in 2026 isn’t the same problem the city was looking at two years ago — by his own account, it’s worse. This isn’t a do-over. It’s a response to a situation that has deteriorated since the city last looked away.

“I think imaginations run pretty wild” on this issue, Tamang told the committee, adding that he wanted to “put it in perspective” because “sometimes we just kind of get numb to it.”

Before Tamang spoke, representatives from Journey On — the local nonprofit that runs street outreach and crisis response for Rapid City’s houseless population — including Executive Director Stephanie Kor and Operations Director Betsy Running Shield, spoke in support of him.

The numbers Tamang cited, from the South Dakota Department of Health, are stark: South Dakota currently has the third-highest alcohol-related death rate in the country. The state’s age-adjusted rate is 31.4 per 100,000, against a national rate of 12.1 — roughly two and a half times the U.S. average. Narrowed to the county level, Pennington County’s rate under the same measure is 34.1; neighboring Minnehaha County’s is 26.3.

The Municipal Playbook: Bypassing the State

Rapid City would not be the first place to run into the central problem here: states, not cities, generally control alcohol licensing and container sizes. That’s the same wall that likely contributed to the 2024 effort’s collapse, and it’s the same tension Maher raised at the meeting.

There was also a more fundamental objection, from Ward 4’s John B. Roberts, who called the ongoing conversation worthwhile but was blunt about its limits: “Doing this and limiting the amount of alcohol that’s being sold is not going to do anything to help with the underlying problem,” Roberts said, adding that a sales restriction risked being “a feel-good thing” that mainly cleans up litter rather than addressing what’s driving the numbers Tamang cited.

None of this has stopped other municipalities elsewhere from finding ways around the same obstacle. A few approaches other cities have used, that Rapid City’s legal department may end up looking at:

The litter and public-health angle. This is the closest parallel to how Tamang’s own concern started. Chelsea, Massachusetts became the first city in that state to ban “nips” — miniature liquor bottles — in 2018, framing it as a waste-management and public-health issue rather than an alcohol regulation.

The city reported dramatic drops in street litter, in protective-custody intakes, and in alcohol-related ambulance calls, which fell from roughly 720 in the year before the ban to 216 within a few years.

Falmouth, Newton, Mashpee, and Wareham have since adopted their own versions; on Martha’s Vineyard, Oak Bluffs and Edgartown followed after town-meeting votes, and nips are now banned across the island.

How Massachusetts actually pulls this off, legally. This is the part worth understanding before assuming Rapid City could do the same thing.

Massachusetts municipalities can’t simply pass an ordinance outlawing nips outright — even Boston City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo, who pushed for a citywide ban, has acknowledged nips can’t be prohibited that way.

Instead, the mechanism runs through licensing. Under the state’s Liquor Control Act, the state’s Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission has confirmed that a city or town’s Local Licensing Authority — the body that grants package-store licenses in the first place — can condition those licenses on a store agreeing not to sell nips or single cans of beer.

It’s not a ban on the product; it’s a restriction attached to the privilege of holding a license. Model language used by some towns, compiled by the Massachusetts Municipal Association, defines the restricted product simply as any alcoholic beverage under 200 ml sold outside a mixed-drink container.

That distinction matters, because it’s also where these efforts get vulnerable. New Bedford’s licensing board — an appointed body, not an elected one — voted to impose the same kind of restriction, and liquor store owners promptly sued.

Critics, including a sitting city councilor, argued the process itself was the problem: an appointed board making the call rather than the elected body residents could actually vote out. The lawsuit is still working through discovery as of this year, meaning even a legally sound restriction can be tied up for years if the politics of how it’s imposed aren’t handled carefully.

Why South Dakota isn’t a simple copy-paste. Massachusetts arrived at this authority because of how its specific licensing statute is written and interpreted — and it’s worth noting other states with similarly old liquor-control laws have read them the opposite way.

Connecticut’s legislative research office concluded in 2020 that towns there lack the authority to restrict nip sales, based on language in that state’s own 1933 liquor law, even though nothing in the underlying policy problem is any different.

South Dakota’s own Department of Revenue is explicit that municipalities and counties are allowed to adopt ordinances more restrictive than state alcohol law, and that off-sale (retail) licenses aren’t subject to the same state quota system that on-sale licenses are — local governments already have some room to set additional conditions on them.

What’s genuinely unresolved is whether that general “more restrictive” authority, under South Dakota Codified Laws Title 35, extends as far as Massachusetts’ interpretation does — to container-size conditions on state-licensed retailers.

That’s not a small technicality. It’s the exact question that separates a state where this has worked (Massachusetts) from one where an identical-sounding effort went nowhere (Connecticut). It’s also, effectively, the homework Tamang has asked the city’s legal department to start.

The “Alcohol Impact Area” approach. Rather than a citywide ban, some cities designate specific high-crime corridors as restricted zones.

Kansas City, Missouri established Alcohol Impact Areas across five corridors this past April, targeting spirits in containers of 200 ml or less and malt beverages in cans of 40 ounces or less, and citing localized violent crime and youth homicide data as justification.

Seattle pioneered the concept by banning specific high-alcohol, low-price brands in two neighborhoods, which was followed by a drop in police calls.

Washington, D.C. and Minneapolis have used narrower, outlet-level versions of the same idea.

Zoning and permit conditions. Some cities attach sales restrictions to conditional use permits for specific stores — often convenience stores — while leaving grocery chains and restaurants untouched.

San Diego uses zoning hearing officers to force certain stores to stop alcohol sales at 10 p.m. and permanently bars them from selling single cans or nips at all.

Spokane has weighed a hybrid downtown zone combining a full single-serve ban with a sales curfew running from midnight to 6 a.m.

Sales curfews, short of a ban. Rather than restricting products outright, some states have simply narrowed the hours those products can be sold. Colorado cuts off to-go cocktail sales at midnight; Vermont at 11 p.m.

The Inevitable Pushback

None of this has gone unopposed elsewhere, and there’s little reason to expect Rapid City would be different if a concrete proposal materializes. The industry and retail arguments tend to fall into a few consistent categories:

• State preemption/authority. Whether South Dakota’s licensing statute gives Rapid City the same authority Massachusetts municipalities have found in theirs is an open legal question, not a given — the same dynamic that may be waiting for whatever the legal department brings back.
• Revenue. Independent liquor retailers in Massachusetts presented data showing potential gross sales drops of 20 to 50 percent tied to nip bans, arguing single-serve bottles are a high-volume product line, not a marginal one.
• Substitution. Opponents argue restrictions don’t reduce consumption, just shift it — toward larger bottles, or toward stores in neighboring jurisdictions without the same rules.
• Equity. Retailers have framed these bans as classist, arguing they penalize people who can afford a $2 bottle after a shift but not a $30 bottle of whiskey or a $15 cocktail.

Whether any of that surfaces in Rapid City depends on what — if anything — comes back from the legal department’s research, and on what shape a proposal eventually takes.

The Deposit Question

It’s worth asking whether a bottle-deposit law could do any of this work instead of — or alongside — a sales restriction. The answer complicates the picture further rather than simplifying it.

Miniature liquor bottles are generally exempt from deposit laws even in states that have them.

Massachusetts’ Bottle Bill doesn’t cover nips at all, which is part of why advocates keep pushing an expanded “Better Bottle Bill” that would add water, wine, and nips to the deposit system.

Connecticut takes a middle approach: nips carry a nonredeemable fee collected at the point of sale, not a real deposit — there’s no bottle to return for cash back.

Forty-ounce malt liquor containers are treated differently. Beer and malt beverages are core categories in nearly every state deposit system, including Connecticut’s, so a 40 there does carry a real, redeemable deposit.

None of this maps directly onto South Dakota, because South Dakota doesn’t have a bottle bill of any kind.

A deposit law was introduced in the legislature in 2008 and was tabled in committee within a few weeks, and no version has passed since.

That means neither nips nor 40s carry any deposit value here — there’s no existing redemption system to tighten or extend the way Massachusetts or Connecticut could. A deposit-based approach in South Dakota would mean building that infrastructure from nothing, almost certainly requiring state legislative action rather than a city ordinance.

Bulk recycling collection — gathering nips separately rather than restricting their sale — has been floated in several of these states already, and it keeps running into the same physical limit: nip bottles are too small for standard sorting equipment, in both curbside materials recovery facilities and the reverse vending machines used in deposit states, which generally exclude anything under roughly 150 milliliters.

Connecticut’s nickel-per-nip surcharge, often assumed to fund nip recycling specifically, in practice goes toward general town litter and waste-reduction efforts — reporting on the program has found the bottles collected through it still aren’t being recycled, for the same sorting-size reason.

Community cleanup efforts, like Rhode Island’s volunteer “Great Nip Pickup Challenge,” have shown bulk collection is possible by hand, just not as automated recycling infrastructure.

The comparison to aluminum can pull-tab drives — a real fundraising model that worked for decades — doesn’t hold up well against nips.

Pull tabs succeeded because they’re uniform aluminum with real scrap value even in tiny pieces, and they separate themselves from the can automatically the moment someone opens it.

Nips are mixed glass or plastic, often still capped, sometimes residue-coated, worth very little per unit, and nothing separates them from ordinary trash without deliberate effort.

No dedicated recycling program for nip bottles specifically — the kind of brand-partnered mail-in program TerraCycle runs for things like contact lenses or oral care packaging — appears to exist nationally.

One nuance worth checking locally: the “too small to sort” problem is mainly an issue for automated systems. Some municipal glass-specific drop-off programs, sorted by hand rather than machine, don’t apply the same size cutoff — whether that’s a real option here depends on whether Rapid City’s own recycling program is single-stream or source-separated.

An Idea from the Editor

None of what follows has been proposed by anyone at the city. It isn’t reported fact — it’s a thought worth putting in front of the people who’d actually have to decide whether it works, so I’m labeling it as mine and setting it apart from everything reported above.

If it turns out Rapid City does meaningful hand-sorting, the core mechanical objection that’s stopped other cities may simply not apply here the way it does elsewhere. And if that door is open, there may be room for something better than a policy fix alone: a public collection effort built more like a competition than a chore.

Beach cleanup contests and Adopt-a-Highway competitions have shown, again and again, that people will hunt down litter enthusiastically when there’s a game attached to it — in a way that “please recycle responsibly” messaging never manages.

Rhode Island’s volunteer nip pickup effort, mentioned above, is close to an informal version of exactly this, and it moved real volume. A gamified version here — a city- or civic-group-run challenge — isn’t out of reach.

My honest read is that Rapid City Public Works would be motivated to help figure this out if asked.

Further Investigations in the Future

This is a rundown of one meeting, not the full picture. Retailer and industry perspective, and a response from the Rapid City Police Department, will be sought as this story develops.

First Calls To Seek Help

South Dakota’s alcohol-related death rate is one of the highest in the country, and this piece deals in numbers that represent real people.

If you or someone you know is struggling with alcohol use, or is in crisis, help is available:

• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call, text, or chat 988. In South Dakota, 988 routes to the Helpline Center, which is trained to assist with substance use concerns as well as suicide risk, 24/7.
• 211 Helpline Center — dial 211 for referrals to local mental health and substance use treatment, crisis intervention, and screening services statewide.
• Journey On — Rapid City’s street outreach and crisis co-response team. Dispatch line: 605-519-1066 (Option 1 for Street Outreach).
• SD Dept. of Social Services, Division of Behavioral Health — offers a county-specific locator for substance use disorder treatment services statewide.
• SAMHSA National Helpline — 1-800-662-4357, free and confidential, 24/7, for treatment referral and information.

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Sourcing

Legal and Finance Committee meeting, Aug. 12, 2026, transcribed from the meeting recording; Council President Tamang’s original Facebook post; 2024 alcohol sales ordinance background per the Sentinel’s prior reporting and the city’s own record (LF081424-06, rcgov.org). Alcohol-related death rate figures per the South Dakota Department of Health, as cited by Tamang at the meeting. Journey On identified per its own published mission and Rapid City reporting on its street-outreach work, and its own published contact and staff listing. Help-section resources per 988lifeline.org, the SD Dept. of Social Services Division of Behavioral Health, and SAMHSA.gov. National comparative reporting drawn from public reporting on municipal alcohol ordinances in Kansas City, Seattle, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, Spokane, Massachusetts municipalities (incl. Chelsea, New Bedford), San Diego, Colorado, and Vermont. Massachusetts legal mechanism per the Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission’s published FAQ (mass.gov) and reporting on the New Bedford Licensing Board lawsuit. South Dakota context per the South Dakota Department of Revenue’s alcohol law guidance (dor.sd.gov), South Dakota Codified Laws Title 35, and the 2008 South Dakota bottle bill legislative record (bottlebill.org). Bulk-recycling and nickel-per-nip reporting per CT News Junkie, CT Mirror, and ecoRI News coverage of Connecticut’s and Rhode Island’s nip programs; recycling-infrastructure background per TerraCycle program listings and municipal recycling guidance

Why is Council President Tamang Revisiting a Two Year Old Ordinance Vote?