Environmental Strategies for Prevention
A Guide To Helping the Prevention Professional Work Effectively in the Community

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History of Alcohol Availability Management

Concern for the public's health, safety, and welfare has long been the cornerstone of local efforts to manage alcohol availability. In fact, many of the strategies implemented by communities and legislatures in colonial times remain in use today.

Through the colonial period and up to around 1800, the local tavern served as a community's central meeting place and thus as the hub of social and civic activities. Taverns were often deliberately situated to make it easy for local residents to stop in and socialize with their fellows. In any town that lacked a formal meeting house, it was usually the tavern that accommodated religious services as well as court sessions, voter meetings, and other local government activities. The tavern was also where community residents went for plays, concerts, and lodge meetings as well as news and political debates (Popham 1978).

In this context, tavern activities -- including alcohol sales -- were regulated through a combination of local ordinances, traditions, and conventions. Many towns restricted the number of taverns within their limits, and in some the tavern-keeper was voted into service by the local population and charged with maintaining community norms and expectations for moderation in serving practices, including the denial of service to known "drunkards." Patrons were to mind their "p's and q's" -- pints and quarts consumed.

alcohol availability: methods and sources through which people obtain alcohol.

Early in the 19th century, alcohol-related problems were viewed primarily as individual failings born of moral laxity or criminal tendencies. Nevertheless, as drunkenness spawned community troubles, colonial governments responded with further restrictions on the number of taverns permitted in a given area. Other controls over drinking included pressure against alcohol imports and social standards for where and how drinking was permitted (Conroy 1991).

From the early 1800s until after the Civil War, the consumption of alcohol in the United States skyrocketed, in part because of its sinking production costs and rising availability as the Nation industrialized and pushed rapidly westward with the expansion of the railroads. Concomitant increases in drunkenness, violence, political unrest, and other alcohol-related problems spurred the Temperance movement, whose followers strove to maintain social order, preserve moral purity, and protect the booming industrial economy through abstinence. Temperance advocates lobbied town councils to eliminate or at least reduce drinking through restrictions on the number and location of taverns and roadhouses (Gusfield 1991).

After the Civil War, the United States' rapid industrialization produced many wonders -- among them a radically increased capacity to produce and supply alcoholic beverages to a fast-growing Nation. Advances in bottle-capping and refrigeration methods allowed for the ever-quicker transport of alcohol products to large, dispersed markets. Meanwhile, a boom in immigration led to the growth of industrial cities populated by groups with cultures embodying varying beliefs and norms related to alcohol use.

Busy urban saloons began to take the place of sleepy rural taverns as the workingman's watering hole of choice. By the 1870s these saloons, amply supplied by powerful brewers and other alcohol producers, had become closely tied to various competing beverage companies. Located to attract the influx of industrial workers to U.S. cities, the saloon was designed to appeal to the factory worker who lived and worked in harsh conditions. In time, however, urban reforms created better living conditions, the marriage rate increased, and saloons lost their appeal and thus their place in the community. The new wave of immigrants came largely from Eastern European cultures that centered on drinking with friends at home rather than at the public saloons favored by their Western European predecessors. At the same time, workers' rising prosperity and distaste for exploitation combined to end the saloons' status as centers for political activity and social camaraderie (Powers 1991). Reformers branded saloons a menace to both family life and society in general (Powers 1991), bringing a rapid halt to such practices as paying wages in alcohol, permitting children to buy and drink alcohol, and allowing alcohol to be sold on Sundays, holidays, and election days.

From the 1880s until World War I, myriad progressive movements for social reform put the prohibition of alcohol at the top of their agendas. Organized opposition to saloons and alcohol use in general, impatience with glacier-paced "control" efforts, and the widespread belief that eliminating alcohol would solve America's social problems developed across the States into a broad and diverse coalition dedicated to a single aim: Prohibition. The movement to ban alcohol grew through the first two decades of the 20th century, leading to the unexpectedly quick passage in 1919 of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors."

Prohibition faced little opposition at first and in fact enjoyed considerable popular support for several years; both alcohol consumption and alcohol - related health problems dropped sharply in the early 1920s. By the mid - 1920s, however, alcohol consumption began creeping upward as Prohibition proved ever - harder to enforce with the growth of organized crime centered on illegal trafficking in alcoholic beverages. Before long both the public and its elected officials became disillusioned with not only the lax enforcement of the law but the very concept of Prohibition (Lee 1963).

A movement to repeal the 18th Amendment gained broad-based support from the general public, government officials, and social scientists, who were inspired by the need to control crime and the desire to raise badly needed Federal revenues to study alternative alcohol-control systems that might replace Prohibition. Ultimately, concern over the public's growing disrespect for their government and the loss of Federal tax revenue from alcohol sales overshadowed any perceived benefits of Prohibition (Gusfield 1963), and on December 5, 1933, the 18th Amendment was repealed by the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Prohibition -- "The Noble Experiment" that lasted 13 years -- arose and vanished via the same political mechanism: a broad-based national movement behind a single pressing issue.

Managing Alcohol Availability Today

Prohibition's end was marked by the publication of Toward Liquor Control (Fosdick and Scott 1933), a study that outlined the development of a State-based system for managing alcohol availability. The study proposed that State-owned stores control off-sale facilities and regulate the sale of both light and heavy alcoholic beverages. On-sale outlets would be restricted to the sale of light beverages. Although not all of its recommendations were adopted, this study helped policymakers at State and local levels return to considering the "controls" discussed back in the Temperance movement days; it also led to the present - day State Alcoholic Beverage Control system.

Licensing and Enforcement Activities

State ABCs began to be established in 1933 in response to the alcohol-related problems that sprang up around Prohibition and the economic needs created by the Great Depression of the early 1930s. These ABC agencies worked quickly to establish controls aimed at eliminating crime and corruption in the alcoholic beverage industry, promptly removing the last vestiges of the lately flourishing illegal bootlegging industry and instituting regular collections of alcohol license fees and taxes the Nation's teetering economy so urgently needed.

The ABCs established licensing and enforcement operations to make sure that retail alcohol outlets complied with new State standards. The States approached alcohol licensing in one of two ways: license States issued private parties licenses to sell alcohol by retail, while control States allowed only their own ABCs to act as alcohol retailers. Both systems require reviews to ensure that proposed retail outlets conform to published State standards governing alcohol serving practices, permissible locations, hours of sale, and other relevant matters. ABC field officers conduct these licensing investigations and monitor the operations of existing outlets. The ABC field officers operate under the same circumstances and exercise the same powers as sworn local police officers, who are also authorized to enforce State ABC laws.

Today State ABCs govern the manufacture, production, wholesale distribution, and retail sales of alcohol under uniform standards established in each State and integrated into a single control system designed to promote fair business practices throughout the alcoholic beverage industry. In addition, State ABCs maintain production standards, ensure proper alcohol tax collection, monitor the industry's business practices, and work to reduce alcohol-related criminal activity.

References

Excerpted from Prakash L. Grover, Executive Editor, "Preventing Problems Related to Alcohol Availability: Environmental Approaches," Reference Guide, Third in the Prevention Enhancement Protocols System (PEPS), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, Division of State and Community Systems Development, DHHS Publication No. (SMA) 99-3298. Downloaded from http://www.health.org/govpubs/PHD822/aar.aspx on December 7, 2004.

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