Task Force on Substance Abuse Prevention – July 8, 2009
Posted on July 8th, 2009
Date & Time: Tuesday, July 08, 2009 at 1:00 PM
Location: Room 130, State Capitol
Agenda: http://tr.im/rqx8
Attachments: none
1:09 pm – Called to order. Senator Prichard was nominated and approved to be the chairman of this task force.
1:10 pm – We are currently reviewing reports and discussing the sale of beer, alcopops, and tobacco products. There was legislation during the last session concerning keeping alcopops out of the hands of minors that was defeated due to industry response to address concerns.
1:12 pm – Michael Langley, the Director of the ABC Board is currently discussing the “great” strides made to reduce the sales of alcohol to minors. Random test purchases and increased fines have been put in place. ABC has been working with law enforcement to increase enforcement. Mr. Langley has expressed that he did not thing separating out alcopops would have been the proper solution to the problem.
1:15 pm – J.R. Thomas, the Director of the Tobacco Control Board is discussing increased enforcement of “smuggling” of tobacco from lower taxed states. He mentions new laws concerning fire safety cigarettes.
1:21 pm – Ann Hines, the Executive Vice President of the Arkansas Oil Market Association (AOMA) is currently discussing efforts made by retailers to prevent sales to minors. The AOMA represents the gas stations and convienence stores that sell most of the tobacco products in the state and an increasing amount of the alcohol.
1:23 pm – Polly Rand Martin, the President of the Arkansas Grocers and Retail Merchants Association is currently discussing efforts made by those stores (which includes most all retail stores including liquor stores, convienence stores, and grocers… even those not involved in sales of tobacco or alcohol.) She is suggesting that there needs to be consequences to the minors who attempt to purchase tobacco.
1:26 pm – Laurie Smalling, the Senior Manager of Public Affairs & Government Relations for Walmart Stores, Inc. is currently discussing their procedures and training to prevent sales of tobacco or alcohol to minors. If the checker is not 21, the registers have interlocks that prevent transactions from being performed by minors. Sales to a minor by a checker results in immediate termination.
1:31 pm – Rep. Pritchard mentions that a study shows that one of the most common sources of alcohol is the minors parents or their friends parents.
1:32 pm – The discussion has returned to the fact that there is a desire to provide a penalty for a minor attempting to purchase tobacco or alcohol. The recommended penalty is community service.
1:35 pm – Rep. Pennartz is asking if there is any penalty for attempting to purchase tobacco or alcohol. Mr. Langley says that there is not. There are laws against possession of alcohol but not cigarettes.
1:42 pm – Current discussion among the committee about “controlled buys” and enforcement methods.
1:56 pm – There is some discussion between the group listed above discussing identification scanning machine. Apparently this is an excessively expense for “mom and pop” businesses and has found that it leads to complacent checking in larger establishments.
2:01 pm – Apparently the violation rate for the “controlled buys” of alcohol is about 16%. The violation rate for tobacco has gone down from 31% to 7%.
2:38 pm – We have beat this topic to absolute death, so much so that we are now discussing if we should legislative labeling the coolers in the stores to indicate they contain alcoholic beverages. Sigh.
2:49 pm – It was just mentioned that in New York, if a store was caught selling cigarettes/alcohol to a minor, they lose their lottery ticket license for six weeks. This brought up the discussion for enforcement of the purchase of lottery tickets.
2:51 pm – Committee adjourned.
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