CLBA Advocacy
For over half a century CLBA has advocated for state wide policies that maintain Colorado as a leader in responsible beverage alcohol sales and service and enhances the economic viability.
Beverage Alcohol in Grocery and Convenience Stores
CLBA is opposed statutory changes on retail sales of beverage alcohol due to its negative affect on preventing drunk driving and underage alcohol sales and consumption. In addition these changes would have a significantly detrimental economic impact on current off-sale retailers.
Long-term Solutions for Drunk Driving and Recidivism
Beverage licensees are stakeholders when it comes to preventing drunk driving. They are engaged in state and local-level policy discussions concerning drunk driving in hope that they may be part of the solution. They support efforts to close legal loopholes in order to better protect their communities from drunk drivers. That has meant supporting graduated sentencing with required ignition interlocks for hardcore and repeat offenders, and other permanent approaches that address recidivism including and incorporating a thorough approach that includes assessment, treatment, monitoring and judicial discretion. CLBA does not believe these goals can be achieved through cookie-cutter, unfunded mandates.
Responsible Alcohol Sales and Underage Access Prevention
With 65% of youth-consumed alcohol coming from family and friends, parents have the greatest influence on minors’ decisions to drink and should not provide alcohol to anyone under the legal purchase age. CLBA has worked as a cosponsor of the Federal Trade Commission’s We Don’t Serve Teens underage drinking prevention campaign, voicing its complete opposition to underage alcohol purchases. Through education, server and seller training, and heightened awareness, CLBA’s goal is to ensure that licensed establishments do not allow anyone under the age of 21 to purchase alcohol.
Supporting the 21st Amendment
CLBA strongly supports the Three-Tier System and a state’s right to implement beverage alcohol policies that are legal, efficient and responsible, while also recognizing the Federal role in fair trade and other issues.
Beverage Alcohol Taxes
Increasing beverage alcohol taxes penalize responsible, middle-income consumers, not alcohol abusers. A tax on beverage alcohol is also a tax on the hospitality industry – threatening the 3.7 million employees of manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers. Beverage alcohol suppliers, wholesalers and retailers already pay government at the federal, state and local level $2 in taxes for every $1 they earn by the sale of beer, wine and spirits. CLBA works with suppliers, wholesalers and retailers to oppose all alcohol and hospitality tax increases.
Drink Responsibly. Drive Responsibly.
CLBA continues to promote this responsibility message that encourages everyone to drink responsibly and drive responsibly. It recognizes the millions of Americans who responsibly consume adult beverages at a tavern, a restaurant, or a friend’s house before safely driving home.
We Don’t Serve Teens
CLBA continues its support of the Federal Trade Commission’s We Don’t Serve Teens public education campaign to help prevent teenagers from getting easy access to alcohol, and to promote compliance with the legal drinking age of 21.
Civil Penalty Programs
Pioneered by Brown Jug in Anchorage, Alaska, the Civil Penalty concept for fighting underage access to alcohol takes an innovative approach by empowering beverage retailers to take an even more active role in preventing underage access to alcohol. Civil Penalty programs are now being advocated for in states throughout the country.
Interagency Task Force on Driving Under the Influence
The Interagency Task Force on Drunk Driving (ITFDD) was established by the Colorado General Assembly in 2006 in an effort to generate more collaboration and consensus for effective solutions to the impaired driving problem in Colorado.
The official mission of the ITFDD is “to investigate methods of reducing incidents of drunk and impaired driving and develop recommendations for the State of Colorado regarding the enhancement of government services, education, and intervention to prevent drunk and impaired driving.”
Responsible Retailing Forum
The RRF brings together public and private stakeholders regulatory and enforcement agencies; attorneys general; public health agencies and advocates; retailers and their associations; distributors and producers; and researchers—in order to (1) identify and promulgate Best Practices to prevent underage sales of age-restricted products; and (2) examine the impacts of RR policies from the diverse perspectives of these different stakeholders.
What is Responsible Retailing?
In 2001, a team of national experts produced a federal guidance document, Report on Best Practices for Responsible Retailing, reflecting the experiences and insights of retailers, alcohol control boards and other state regulatory and enforcement agencies (“R-E agencies”), state attorneys general, and academic researchers. The Best Practices identified in that report have been further developed by the Responsible Retailing Forum into an “Integrated Responsible Retailing” model. This model portrays effective Responsible Retailing as a continuing system; and it calls upon R-E agencies, wholesalers/distributors and other private and public stakeholders to assist retailers by providing the resources and mechanisms needed to sustain the Responsible Retailing system.
The Integrated RR model involves three distinct levels:
Store Level
An effective Responsible Retailing system has, at its core, (a) point-of-sales protocols for verifying age and refusing sales to customers who may be underage (and/or intoxicated), and (b) store practices regarding hiring, training and supervising sales clerks. The Integrated Responsible Retailing model recognizes that the problem of underage sales is not so much “solved” as “managed.” The model emphasizes the role of managers in reinforcing correct age verification/sales refusal conduct through explicit store policies, through training, through monitoring employee performance and through their own personal conduct.
Community Level
The 2nd tier of an Integrated Responsible Retailing model is a community context which connects the public and private sectors in a collaborative, problem-solving approach to underage sales and use. R-E agencies have the dual role of enforcing laws on age-restricted products and also of assisting retailers to identify, adopt and sustain Responsible Retailing practices that are appropriate for that community. Retailers are seen not merely as objects of enforcement who are “compliant” or “non-compliant.” Rather, retailers and their wholesalers/ distributors are seen as active partners with R-E agencies to identify and address community-level patterns of underage acquisition and use. This model, based upon the principles of “Community Policing,” allows public and private stakeholders together to address the actual patterns of underage access and use of alcohol and other age-restricted products within the community and to consider coherent strategies to reduce use and abuse by minors.
Policy Level
The 3rd tier of an Integrated Responsible Retailing model consists of the public policies at the state (or local) level that encourage the adoption of effective Responsible Retailing practices. Some states, for example, mandate Responsible Retailing training for stores and their employees. Others create positive incentives—such as reductions in liability insurance, or mitigation for violations—for establishments which engage in approved Responsible Retailing programs. Two important policy issues are: (a) linking non-compliance to remedial training and (b) establishing a stable funding mechanism so that training, materials and mystery shopper inspections can be sustained.
