Lavender, whether serving alcohol is responsible or not depends on how you define the term.

One dictionary definition is "legally accountable." So if you intend to be responsible in that way, keep a weather eye on the court case in New Jersey USA that a jury is deliberating on as I write: a man is charged with manslaughter, vehicular homicide and aggravated assault by auto for his role in a fatal auto accident. He wasn't in the accident; he picked up his drunken buddy at a police barracks after the buddy had been arrested for drunken driving, and he drove the drunken buddy back to the buddy's car instead of to the buddy's home. The buddy then drove away and ran head-on into another vehicle; both drivers died, and the passenger in the other vehicle suffered life-threatening critical injuries. Why do I mention this? Because we could soon see bartenders and pub owners being charged for allowing patrons to leave their establishments with a blood-alcohol level over the legal limit, when those patrons then have auto accidents.

How would a "responsible" pub owner keep all of his customers in a condition where their driving ability would not be impaired? Be present whenever the pub is open, and keep every one of your customers at the bar, serving them coffee or Coke until they sober up before letting them out the door? Tell them they can only have one drink per hour? Give them breathalyzer tests just to be sure? Interesting theories, but they don't sound feasible (or lucrative). As others on this thread have said, prohibition doesn't work, not even a temporary prohibition. And making a "responsible" judgment call about each customer's sobriety before he leaves is never failsafe.

For those who say that alcohol is here to stay and people will abuse it anyway and one less bar wouldn't help the problem substantially, I certainly agree that all of that is true. On the other hand, one more bar would exacerbate the problem because it offers one more attraction toward alcohol abuse. My basic question to Lavender is: do you want to be part of the problem? To me, the "responsible" behavior would be to NOT sell alcohol in an environment where encouraging its continued consumption is your reason for being in business.

Why not find a more "responsible" line of work? If you want to be a landlord/landlady, why not buy an apartment building? Why does it have to be a pub?