Many Bars Over-Serve Alcohol
My opponents will argue that “Eighteen, nineteen- and twenty-year-olds are drinking anyway. If we legalize it, at least they’ll be drinking in a controlled setting.”
Keep in mind that a bar is not necessarily a “safe” or “controlled” environment to drink. A recent study showed that 76 percent of bars sold alcohol to obviously intoxicated patrons. Research shows that about half of drivers arrested for driving while intoxicated (DWI) or killed as drinking drivers in traffic crashes did their drinking at licensed establishments.
Instead of allowing 18-20 year olds to drink in bars, we should be doing more to prevent their access to alcohol via commercial establishments. According to a study by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) in July 2005, teen access to alcohol through illegal purchases at alcohol retail establishments across the country is widespread. Previous research has shown that underage buyers were successful in purchasing beer without age identification in 50 percent of the bars visited.
The ease with which young people acquire alcohol—three-quarters of 8th graders say that it is “fairly easy” or “very easy” to get—indicates that more must be done. Current laws against furnishing and sales to minors need better enforcement and stiff penalties to deter violations. Better education and prevention-oriented laws are needed to reduce the commercial pressures on kids to drink.
Imagine how many lives we might save if the MLDA 21 law was enforced at levels similar to impaired-driving enforcement. We should continue to support this law and ensure that it is enforced.
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So what if they overserve? If you drink, you drink. If you die, you die, just like it says on the license plates here in New Hampshire.
First of all, the statement that half of the people arrested for drunk driving came from bars proves absolutely nothing. This means that it's a coin toss as to whether a drunk person is coming from a bar or a private setting. Well where else do you think they are coming from? All this should tell you is that people who decide to drive drunk will do it whether or not they are at a commercial establishment, at home, or at a friend's house.
As for the 3/4 of 8th graders say that it is "fairly easy" to get alcohol statement, this should raise many questions in anyone's mind who comes across it. If adults are truly stupid enough to give or sell alcohol to an 8th grader, this doesn't say much for the argument by PIRE that adult's minds are any more developed than teenagers, much less 8th graders. I don't think I have ever heard of or seen an 8th grader who looks over 18, much less 21. I find it hard to believe that this fact did not come from an altered or severely warped survey of Junior High students.
The fact is that bars and other commercial establishments that serve alcohol are guaranteed to either have a sober staff or be shut down very quickly. This results in a much higher chance that if something goes wrong, there will be someone with a clear mind to do what needs to be done to help the intoxicated individual.
I have served as a contracted trainer for Kentucky Alcoholic Beverage Control's STAR Curriculum for Responsible Server Training for the past five years. This was due to a city ordinance mandating that all vendors be trained every three years. Through a careful study reviewing drunk driving records and underage citations and onsite investigative aide inspections, this educational program (as well as other education interventions like TIPS, Safe Serve and Bar Code) have helped reduce down the underage drinking and drunk driving.
Environmental strategies like social host ordinances, keg registration ordinances, mandatory alcoholic beverage server training ordinances and support of law enforcement and the judiciary would be much more impactive than following the "normative model" advocated by the College/University presidents.
For more information, you may contact Sandra Watts at Kentucky Alcoholic Beverage Control Training Branch - (502) 564-4850.
I agree that it is very important to train alcohol vendors.
But I don't agree with the argument that bars are not a controlled setting just because half of drunk drivers drank in a bar (I guess the other half drank at home) and that bars sometimes serve intoxicated people.
What doesn't happen in a bar are things like passing out on the floor after drinking multiple shots and choking on your own vomit-- in most bars, someone is going to notice and take action! Similarly, to take sexual advantage of a drunk woman, you have to get her out of the bar and away from the watchful eyes of her friends rather than just dragging her into a nearby bedroom at the house party. It is also harder to ply her with a stronger drink then she is expecting, or refill it when she isn't looking if the bartender makes the drink and someone has to order each one.