A mini-grant award from Minnesota Join Together (MJT) to St. Paul's licensing department has created quite a stir recently. Members of the Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association (MLBA) and the St. Paul Hospitality Association have been attempting to derail St. Paul's acceptance of the $3,000 grant. These two groups, both alcohol retailers associations, have called their members to action and have been arguing that the city should not accept these funds. This issue has generated a lot of media attention in the Twin Cities and provides insight into the battles ahead on reducing illegal commercial sales to underage youth.

MJT has awarded 22 mini-grants to 20 communities during the last two years as part of its strategy to change youth access to alcohol polices at the statewide level. Approximately half of these awards have gone to local community organizations and law enforcement agencies to help conduct compliance checks to ensure alcohol license holders are complying with minimum age of sales laws. Compliance checks

conducted through these mini-grants, University of Minnesota research statistics and other community-based checks have consistently found that underage youth can purchase alcohol without being asked for age identification 50 percent of the time.

It seems that the alcohol industry and retail associations do not want local authorities to conduct compliance checks. Nor in fact, if compliance checks are conducted, do they want any significant penalties. This is not surprising considering the industry's dismal compliance rate and the fact that continued failure could lead to fines and ultimately to loss of liquor licenses. They have consistently argued in the past that we are "prohibitionists" or "neo-prohibitionists" trying to put them out of business. This is not true, we simply want them to comply with the law. Thus far, they have been successful at keeping mandatory compliance checks out of state law. That leaves local authorities to decide for themselves whether to conduct compliance checks. We offer support to local communities to conduct compliance checks while continuing our efforts at the statewide level.

In the St. Paul situation, the retail associations have changed their argument. Instead of calling us names, they claim that they are looking out for citizens by challenging the city not to accept "special interest" money. Even if improving the health of our communities and youth by keeping alcohol out of their hands is a special interest, the irony of the alcohol industry positioning itself as the vanguard of the public interest when it comes to issues of special interest money and politics cannot go unmentioned. In the April 1998, Follow the Dollar Report, published by Common Cause, it was documented that alcohol and related interests have given more than $26 million to federal candidates and political parties since 1987.

It turns out that in St. Paul the MLBA has a contract with the city to conduct responsible beverage server training and to do compliance checks. Establishments that attend training receive a discount on their licensing fees. We have no problem with and, in fact,support industry self-policing. The issue is whether that is enough by itself. Even the industry's own data show a 25 percent failure rate on their self-imposed compliance checks.

We know 100 percent compliance is not possible. After all, we are dealing with human beings, and people make mistakes. However, communities should expect better compliance with the law. The fact is, compliance rates need to be improved dramatically in order to keep illegally purchased alcohol out of the hands of our youth. Compliance checks combined with reasonable penalties have been shown to improve compliance rates in communities across Minnesota. St. Paul should be no exception.

The St. Paul city council is expected to vote on acceptance of our mini-grant by the end of September. In the meantime, the Mayor's office, city licensing and police staff are working with advocates and the industry to try to work out a "compromise" position to recommend to the council. We are hoping this will include a formal policy of compliance checks on license holders, additional enforcement efforts targeting underage buyers and a reasonable schedule of administrative fines and penalties. A comprehensive approach could do wonders for reducing underage drinking in St. Paul. We will soon find out where the industry really stands when it comes to reducing illegal commercial sales to underage youth.

Jeff Nachbar, Minnesota Join Together, can be reached at 800-247-1303 or 612-427-5310 or jnachbar@miph.org.