I recently created the alcohol wiki page to document usage of this key (1,683 instances).
Based on the values, usage appears to be both as a descriptor (e.g. alcohol=wine) and a restriction (e.g. alcohol=no - though this is also sometimes a descriptor).
One thing I was surprised to see was a lack of the use of alcohol:conditional as a key, i.e. to describe places where alcohol is not permitted to be drunk during certain hours of the day (e.g. at a beach, park or city centre).
Is a different tagging scheme being used for this?
is alcohol really banned from 6pm to 8am (resolution is on the edge and I am not sure I read it correctly)? So you can have alcohol for breakfast but not in the evening after 6?
although most values of “alcohol” seem to specify drinks containing alcohol (wine etc.), it seems more reasonable to use it for bans / permissions (yes/no/….)
The sign: access_sign says, bottle and glass not permitted.
Underneath, under text, with alcohol at time between …
but these are just a symbol, I am pretty sure they also include flasks, or barrels and drinking from horns with the picture, although I am still not sure about ice cream containing alcohol. Maybe you’d have to read up the ordinance to check for these details.
In this specific case, I believe it is consumption of alcohol that is prohibited between certain hours:
APAs prohibit the consumption of alcohol in parks, beaches, reserves and ovals between specified signed hours.
But I’m not sure it’s really worth trying to “split hairs” on this in OSM. I imagine if you had a bottle of beer during those times, you’d be asked to move on regardless of whether you were technically drinking it or not.
It seems unlikely that they would also be included in the ban but, let’s be honest, that seems very unlikely to be enforceable anyway. How would the appropriate figure of authority really know?
To add one local data point - in England and Wales, the relevant regulation is here. Quoting from that:
“It is important to note that these powers do not make it a criminal offence to consume alcohol within a
designated area. An offence is committed if the individual refuses to comply with a constable’s request to refrain from drinking.”
So (in England and Wales at least) maybe some sort of “designation” around the area that refers to the legislation would be the way to go, since it isn’t a straightforward “alcohol=no” here. Also in England and Wales, the areas covered by DPP orders can be a bit odd (see e.g. here (pdf)), so will not corresponding to an existing OSM feature.
Outside of England and Wales, some other form of tagging (perhaps on existing OSM features, as suggested above) may make more sense.
I imagine if you had a bottle of beer during those times, you’d be asked to move on regardless of whether you were technically drinking it or not.
you could argue you were keeping it so you could drink it at 8am when drinking becomes legal
It seems unlikely that they would also be included in the ban but, let’s be honest, that seems very unlikely to be enforceable anyway. How would the appropriate figure of authority really know?
right it would not be enforceable, but it doesn’t matter for legality. Would it be admissible to get drunk and then go to the beach (without bringing alcohol)? From what I guess, considering the times of the ban, the idea is that drunk people at night could be noisy? Or is it to protect them from drowning?
If you knew about the ban and wanted to offend the law, you could drink vodka from water bottles and it would be similarly difficult to figure it out. For the tagging, I agree that we should distinguish consumption from just having it with you.
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Casey_boy: