• It is estimated that 7.4% of all American adults are alcoholics. That equals 14 million adults. (Tenth Special Report on Alcohol and Health, US Department of Health and Human Services (June 2000) There are 3.3 million teenage alcoholics in the United States. (Handbook on Counseling Youth, Josh McDowell and Bob Hostetler, Word Publishing, Dallas Tx., 1997, Pg. 391)
• In the United States, injuries are the fourth-leading cause of death, exceeded only by heart disease, stroke, and cancer. Of all deaths from injury in the United States, about 65 percent are classified as unintentional or accidental. The other 35 percent are intentional injuries, occurring as a result of fights, assaults, suicide, homicide, and other crimes. Alcohol-related fatalities have been estimated to be about 43 percent of all unintentional injuries. (Accidents and Injuries from Alcohol, BookRags, http://www.bookrags.com/research/accidents-and-injuries-from-alcohol-dat-01/)
• The U.S. Department of Justice Report on Alcohol and Crime found that alcohol abuse was a factor in 40 percent of violent crimes committed in the U.S. (About.Com: Alcoholism)
• More kids try alcohol than try cigarettes. (The Center on Alcohol Marketing at Georgetown University, Fact Sheets). When youth between the ages of 12 and 20 consume alcohol, they drink on average about five drinks per occasion about six times a month. This amount of alcohol puts an adolescent drinker in the binge range. Underage drinking is associated with academic failure, illicit drug use and a range of physical consequences. It can cause alterations in the structure and function of the developing brain, which continues to mature into the mid-to late twenties, and may have consequences reaching far beyond adolescence. (Excerpts from The Surgeon General’s Call to Action To Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking, 2007) Alcohol kills 6½ times more youth than all other illicit drugs combined. (Mothers Against Drunk Driving)
• Three in every 10 Americans will be involved in an alcohol-related crash in their lives. (Mothers Against Drunk Driving). In 2006, North Carolina had 1,559 traffic fatalities, 554 alcohol-related traffic fatalities (36% of all fatalities), and 482 alcohol-related traffic fatalities in which the driver had a BAC of .08 or higher. (MADD, North Carolina)

When faces are placed on these statistics and they are not viewed simply from an impersonal perspective, it becomes abundantly clear that it is both tragic and naïve to think making alcohol more accessible will not exacerbate such problems. Make no mistake about it, when citizens oppose Liquor-By-The-Drink coming to their community, they are waging war against further proliferation of America’s number one drug problem.

COUNTERING ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF LBD

#1. Alcohol Sales are needed to generate more tax revenue.

• For every one dollar generated in tax revenue from alcohol sales in North Carolina, there is a corresponding expenditure of $21.42 due to the cost of alcohol related problems. (Alcohol/Drug Council of North Carolina, 1/2/2002)
• Society bears a huge financial burden in increased welfare cost, higher insurance premiums, police and court costs, and cost for incarceration. This doesn’t even take into account the personal cost of suffering that individuals and families must endure.

#2. Alcohol sales are needed to enhance economic growth.

• Whatever local citizens spend on alcohol means fewer dollars for groceries, appliances, clothes, shoes, goods and services for every merchant and business in the area. Alcohol is always a drain on the economy.
• The overall cost of alcohol use and abuse to society has been growing through the years. The Rice Study (1990) for the University of California at San Francisco placed the cost at 98.6 billion annually. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (1990) placed the cost at $133 billion annually. Furthermore, the National Center For Health Statistics (1995) estimated the annual cost to be over $150 billion. (Salt and light, Newsletter of the Mississippi Baptist Christian Action Comm., Vol. 10, No. 1, “The Economic Impact of Alcohol”, Paul Griffin Jones, Jan/Feb 1997) According to the National Institute of Health, the Harwood study reveals that the overall estimated cost is presently $184.6 billion. That amounts to approximately $638 for every man woman and child in America. (Tenth Special Report on Alcohol and Health, US Dept. Of Health and Human Services, June 2000)

When all the facts are considered, the sale of alcohol never provides an economic boon for any community.

#3. Beer, Wine and Liquor by the Drink sales in restaurants will bring fine dining establishments to the area.

• Hillsborough has had liquor by the drink for 30 years, but there still are no national chain restaurants in that city.
• The Alamance News did research on Piedmont Triad cities (a 2006 estimated population of 14,144) and concluded there is little evidence of an influx of national chain restaurants if a city adopts mixed drink sales. (The Alamance News, April 3, 2008)
• In the early 1990s, North Carolina required restaurants that sold alcohol to have to sell as much food. The alcohol to food ratio in restaurants was 50/50. In 2003, the alcohol to food ratio was lowered by the North Carolina General Assembly to 70/30 – meaning a restaurant’s total receipts for alcohol sales may be as high as 70% and requiring only 30% of its sales must be for food. Unfortunately, this does more to lend to the opening of small bar-type establishments that may easily meets the state’s definition of a restaurant simply by having a grill and tables that will seat 36 people, than it does to attract fine restaurants to a community.
• When communities are unable to attract chain restaurants that do not serve alcohol, this is a good gauge they will not be unable to attract those that do. Some of the chain restaurants that do not serve alcohol are: Bob Evans, Cracker Barrel, Denny’s, Friendly’s, Fuddrucker’s, Golden Corral, International House of Pancakes, K&W Cafeteria, Shoney’s, or Steak-N-Shake.

#4. Beer, Wine and Liquor by the Drink sales are needed to lure new industry, create new jobs and new opportunities.

• Greater accessibility to alcohol is never needed to make a community prosperous. Companies considering whether to locate in a community are really looking for available labor, job skills, work ethics, adequate roads, good government, an efficient educational system, medical facilities, climate, water availability, tax laws, utilities, etc. – not whether one can get a mixed beverage.

#5. Liquor by the Drink sales will provide better control. “The higher price per drink will encourage moderation and reduce consumption. Besides there are laws in North Carolina that hold establishments responsible for drunken patrons who get out on the highway and cause an accident or injury to others.”

• Typically speaking, it is true individuals will drink less when the price of alcohol is higher. But higher prices don’t affect consumption levels, when offset by a greater density in alcohol outlets. Studies prove community consumption levels are primarily related to availability and not to price.

Researchers at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center determined that Americans who have easy access to alcohol usually drink more. “There is a distribution of drinkers in every neighborhood that range from abstainers to heavy drinkers. In neighborhoods where alcohol availability is greater, the whole distribution of drinkers is shifted toward heavier drinking and more permissive norms,” said Richard Scribner, a professor of preventive medicine at the school. “They all think its okay to drink a little bit more than people in other neighborhoods. It’s almost a cultural effect.” The study was based on 24 urban residential areas in New Orleans, LA. Researchers counted the number of businesses in each area that sold alcohol and then surveyed residents of the neighborhood about their attitudes toward drinking.

Scribner and his colleagues determined that the higher the concentration of liquor outlets, the more relaxed an attitude people had toward alcohol.

Researchers also discovered that neighborhoods where alcohol was easily accessible also had higher rates of homicides, violent assaults and drunk driving offenses. “Everybody assumes that individual factors determine the way people are, and they just happen to live where they do,” Scriber said. “Yet people’s drinking behaviors appear to be defined by the norms of the neighborhood where they live. They drink based on how much their friends and people around them drink. They adopt the norms of the neighborhoods they live in.”

George Hacker, director of the Alcohol Policies Project at the non-profit Center for Science in the Public Interest said that this study sends a warning signal, and a message to communities to take a good look beyond individual factors and start looking at community factors. Policies that regulate the density of alcohol outlets are very important, he said. (The Pennsylvania Issue, Liquor Store Density Associated with Heavy Drinking, Crime, Spring/2000)

• Currently, North Carolina law only requires a bar to stop serving someone they know is drunk. But even so, it’s extremely difficult to prove any culpability on the part of an alcohol establishment when a person has had too many drinks and then goes out and injures someone.

In March of 2004, a jury in Durham held a restaurant responsible for allowing a drunken patron to leave and cause a fatal wreck, but the judge immediately threw out the verdict and the $1.2 million award, saying the law didn’t support it. After the 1997 wreck that killed her husband, Theresa Hall sued Torero’s II, the restaurant where the drunken driver had spent five hours before getting on the road. Despite the judgment of 12 jurors to the contrary, Superior Court Judge Abraham Jones said Torero’s wasn’t responsible. Teresa Hall’s co-counsel, Philip Mullins, said lawyers rarely take these kinds of cases because few are as blatant as the Torero’s case. Nevertheless, the Torero’s verdict was thrown out.
Moderation does not provide all of the necessary solution.

Even social drinking increases risky behavior. A brain imaging study has found that after consuming alcohol, even social drinkers find it difficult to tell the difference between threatening and non-threatening social stimulus. They show decreased sensitivity in the brain regions involved in detecting threats and increased activity in the regions involved in reward. “At one end of the spectrum, less anxiety might enable us to approach a new person at a party,” said Marina Wolf, PhD in a news release. “But at the other end of the spectrum, we may fail to avoid an argument or a fight.” (The study was published in the April 30, 2008 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.)

Moderate drinking can cause an increased risk of accidents; strokes
caused by bleeding; medication interactions (many cough and cold
medications can increase the sedative effects of alcohol); breast
cancer (alcohol increases estrogen levels, which is a risk for
pre-menopausal women); birth defects (fetal alcohol effect (FAE) and low birth weight); and heavier drinking (many people, such as
recovering alcoholics, can’t maintain moderation).. (Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

According to Griffith Edwards, (Alcohol Policy: Securing a Positive Impact on Health, 2001), “In addition to the potential individual consequences of increased alcohol consumption, the public may suffer from the promotion of moderate drinking. Although drinking is a personal act and an individual responsibility, it is also behavior shaped by our societies and something for which society as a whole has responsibility.”

According to the World Health Organization, “measures that influence drinkers in general will also have an impact on heavier drinkers.” Promoting increased levels of moderate drinking may in turn increase overall consumption, even for those who should not do so. (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Alcohol Alert. No.16 PH 315. April, 1992.)

According to the Wall Street Journal, a survey of 14,000 employees at seven major U.S. companies found that workers who should not do so. (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Alcohol Alert. No.16 PH 315. April, 1992.)

According to the Wall Street Journal, a survey of 14,000 employees at seven major U.S. companies found that workers who are not considered problem drinkers cause, in aggregate, far more incidents of absenteeism, tardiness and poor quality of work than those regarded as alcohol-dependent. They also found that people considered occasional drinkers, in total, cause nearly 29% more incidents such as absenteeism, tardiness, less than acceptable work or arguments with colleagues than workers who said they didn’t drink at all. (Taken from All About Alcohol, Alcohol Research Information Service, 2007)

The very nature of alcohol is to weaken the will to drink with moderation.

ALCOHOL SALES, CRIME AND CHILD ABUSE

• Using a computer, Charlotte Police analyst drew a 500 foot circle around every convenience store, nightclub and alcohol outlet in the county. They found that the circles contained only about 6% of the department’s entire patrol area. Yet half the reported robberies and thefts, a third of the reported car break-ins and assaults, and nearly half of the arrests for weapons, disorderly conduct and prostitution – all occurred within five-hundred feet of those alcohol outlets. (The Charlotte Observer, Police Study Links Crime to ABC-Licensed Sites, Errin Lee Martin, 1/18/98)
• A 2004 alcohol study examined whether or not alcohol access in neighborhood areas is differentially related to substantiated reports of child physical abuse and neglect. The results of that study suggested that alcohol access is differentially related to types of child maltreatment, with higher densities of bars being related to higher rates of child neglect, and higher rates of off-premise outlets related to higher rates of child physical abuse. (Alcohol Outlets and Child Physical Abuse and Neglect: Applying Routine Activities Theory to the Study of Child Maltreatment; Bridget Freisthler, Lorraine T. Midanik, Paul J. Gruenewald, 2004)

LIQUOR BY THE DRINK AND DRUNK DRIVING

• Even before local option was adopted in 1978, people could drink when dining out. Restaurants in counties that permitted alcohol sales could obtain licenses to serve beer, wine, and “setups” – ice and mixers to go with the spirits that patrons brought with them. There was even speculation that this “brown bagging” tradition caused more trouble than would serving liquor-by-the-drink, since some patrons were inclined to finish the bottle they brought with them before driving home. But substance abuse researchers James Blose and Harold Holder (Blose and Holder 1987; Holder and Blose 1985) analyzed patterns in alcohol-related traffic crashes before and after adoption, comparing the early adopters with jurisdictions that were similar in some respects but did not elect the liquor-by-the-drink option. The evidence of their study suggested an increase of about 20% in alcohol related crashes. (The minimum drinking age for liquor was 21 throughout this period). Apparently the increased availability of liquor at restaurants, and the change in the drinking environments – some establishments opened bar or lounge areas for the first time – led to a sharp increase in DUI. (Paying the Tab: The Cost and Benefits of Alcohol Control, Philip Cook, Duke University professor of public policy and economics, Princeton University Press, 2007, pg. 159)
• Federal, State, and local governments should not adopt policies that result in increased availability of alcoholic beverages without careful analysis, study, and public debate about the potential effects on alcohol-impaired driving. This applies particularly to bars, restaurants, and other public facilities, because research shows that the majority of alcohol-impaired drivers obtain alcohol at such places.  (A highlight from Surgeon General C. Everett Koop’s Workshop on Drunk Driving, 1988)

ALCOHOL REFERENDUMS AND YOUNG PEOPLE

• What kind of message does it send to youth in schools – who are being taught to “Say No To Drugs,” – who are being encouraged to remain “drug free” through programs such as DARE, etc. – when an alcohol referendum is approved in their community? Could there ever be any clearer example of double talk?
• Purchase and possession of alcohol by people under age 21 is illegal in all 50 states. Yet 44.9% of high school students reported drinking alcohol during the past 30 days. (Division of Adult and Community Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2007)
• In 2006, about 10.8 million people ages 12 to 20 (28.3 percent of this age group) reported drinking alcohol in the past month. Approximately 7.2 million were binge drinkers and 2.4 million were heavy drinkers. (2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings [Office of Applied Studies, NSDUH Series H-32, DHHS Pub. No. SMA 07-4293]. Rockville, Md.)
• Underage drinkers are often able to get a mixed drink at a restaurant via a number of ways – when the establishment is not careful to check IDs – showing a fake ID – when someone over age 21 purchases the drink and then passes it along. Opening additional outlets for alcohol sales increases the opportunities for underage drinking – thus, exacerbating the problems of underage drinking.

“Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise” (Prov. 20:1).