Organizations across Arizona are working to construct a program to catch providers of alcohol to minors by tagging every keg sold in the state.
Chuck Palm, the director of public policy and training at the Pima Prevention Partnership, is working with various groups statewide to urge the Legislature to pass the program into law.
Palm said a keg registration law has the potential to reduce underage drinking by cutting off availability to alcohol.
“When we’re talking about desert parties and the big house parties, what happens is you have a keg, it’s tapped [and] everybody there is just drinking from the tap,” Palm said. “So when the police are called to a party or something where they know that underage drinking has been taking place, they normally have no way of knowing who provided the alcohol.”
Since people are likely to deny providing the keg, the tagging program would enable authorities to trace it back to the purchaser, Palm said.
Twenty-six states had put keg registration laws into effect by 2008, according to kegerators.com.
“There is no required registration in [Arizona] and local communities are not allowed to, or are preempted from, writing their own keg registration laws or ordinances,” Palm said. “That means that local communities have to come up with some form of voluntary keg registration or find a way to lobby in the Legislature or the governor to make keg registration a priority at the state level,”
Several Tucson organizations, including Campus Health officials at UA, are working with local alcohol vendors to institute a voluntary keg registration program in the community.
David Salafsky, director of Health Promotion and Preventive Services at UA and a member of the Pima County Task Force to Reduce Underage Drinking, said the voluntary program could be launched as early as next week in Tucson.
“We’ve got a number of retailers involved — they want to do what they can to keep alcohol out of the hands who are not of age to drink,” he said.
However, some vendors didn’t share Salafsky’s confidence in the program.
Keith Gillesti, a clerk at Top Liquor on University Drive in Tempe, said he doubted that keg registration would be effective.
“To be honest, I think it’d be kind of unnecessary to make a [registration] law,” Gillesti said. “People are going to buy the kegs regardless — if they want it, they’re going to get it. We don’t in any way support people drinking underage but it’s out of our hands.”
Top Liquor already writes down the personal information of people who purchase kegs for their own legal reasons, and a registration ordinance or law would add to paperwork and delay keg sales, he said.
“It might take us more time too, if we had to jump through these extra hoops to make it official. We already take everyone’s name, address, phone number and we check all IDs, even the people with the person buying the keg,” Gillesti said. “For our own personal legality reasons we hang on to it for seven years — we have giant stacks of keg slips.”
The topic of keg registration has become a prominent issue in the local governments of cities surrounding colleges, including Tempe and Tucson.
“It’s a problem for almost all universities and colleges because you’ve got a mixture of students who are of age and students who are minors and they interact every day and the community norm is that when you’re in college you are able to participate in all the drinking that goes on surrounding that school, unless you get caught,” Palm said. “That’s why keggers are sort of an accepted way to party.”
Magellan Health Services, an informational resource for behavioral health, hosted a conference in Phoenix on Tuesday for city and community members to discuss measures they could take to prevent underage drinking.
Bobbie Cassano, the coordinator for Tempe’s Coalition to Reduce Underage Drinking and Drug Use, said keg registration would be difficult to institute under the current Legislature and a better approach may be a social host ordinance.
A social host ordinance would hold property owners responsible for any underage drinking that occurs on the property, Palm said.
In the coalition’s report released in spring 2009, the Tempe Community Council outlined the issues believed to be contributing factors to underage drinking within the city, naming adults who provide alcohol to minors as among the key factors.
This is another reason a social host ordinance would be a better option, Cassano said.
“The social host ordinance is eventually more the direction I think Tempe will be heading now,” she said. “The keg registration is going to be difficult to start, and not necessarily the most effective because kids don’t usually get their alcohol from kegs, it’s more frequently bottles or cans.”
Palm said while he supports a keg registration program, he understands that one of the program’s weaknesses is that it doesn’t address alcohol outside of beer kegs.
“If I were buying a keg myself and I had a big party at my house that I had a tap set up, I would absolutely have to watch that keg because I wouldn’t want to be caught and be the guy who provided alcohol to a minor,” Palm said.
But this is the same idea as coolers full of beers and cabinets filled with liquor, he said.
“It’s scarier to talk about kegs because of the community norm that keggers are just these unrestricted crazy things that are attended by young people,” Palm said.
The social host ordinances throughout the state are passing county by county because they don’t affect retailers, he said.
While Palm said most people would likely be in favor of a keg registration law, he doubted that current legislators would be quick to act on the project.
“We have probably got one of the most conservative state legislatures, and generally they shy away from over-regulating any industry,” he said.
Palm said most adults would likely approve of some sort of a keg registration process, but no such poll has been conducted.
“We don’t know the will of the people yet, and until we do, the Legislature is going to be reluctant to move on this issue,” he said.
Reach the reporter at michelle.parks@asu.edu
