The San Benito County Behavioral Health department is seeking
nominations for the Responsible Alcohol Merchant Awards, the first
ever event of its kind in San Benito County.
In conjunction with Project Sober, Friday Night Live and local
business owners, the department is seeking nominations of
businesses that refuse to sell alcohol to minors and actively
contribute to the community.
The San Benito County Behavioral Health department is seeking nominations for the Responsible Alcohol Merchant Awards, the first ever event of its kind in San Benito County.
In conjunction with Project Sober, Friday Night Live and local business owners, the department is seeking nominations of businesses that refuse to sell alcohol to minors and actively contribute to the community.
The Awards program is funded through a federal grant to reduce alcohol abuse. Nomination forms can be found online at www.sbcprevention.com and are due March 23. Nominations can also be picked up at the Chamber of Commerce.
The RAMA awards look at a few different factors for merchants such as how they are involved in community and neighborhood improvement activities or what the merchant does to participate in charitable giving in the community. The nomination form also asks what employee training is offered to limit youth access to alcohol.
“Training store clerks to check IDs reduces the availability of alcohol for local youth, which then decreased the rate of underage drinking over time,” said Renee Hankla, the Substance Abuse Program Manager.
Nominations will be reviewed by youth from the San Benito County Friday Night Live Partnership and local law enforcement.
RAMA winners will be awarded a Responsible Alcohol Merchant Award plaque or certificate at a press conference. The plaques can be posted in their storefronts, along with large banners promoting their participation in the RAMA program. They will also be awarded a proclamation from the County Board of Supervisors. Winners will be eligible for the Perpetual Plaque, which encourages merchants to continue their responsible practices by awarding them special recognition in coming years.
Part of the process also includes inviting merchants to take the “Committed Pledge” that they understand that underage drinking is a problem in the community and that as a responsible merchant, they refuse to sell alcohol to anyone under 21 years old, Hankla said.
2010-11 surveys of youth found that 78 percent of 11th graders in the state said it is fairly easy to very easy to obtain alcohol.
Of the teens surveyed, 16.8 percent said they got alcohol by stealing it from local merchants. Another 10 percent said they got it by purchasing from local merchants.
A survey of adults found that 70 percent of adults support rewarding merchants for not selling alcohol to minors.
Hankla said the funding for the RAMA award is from a three-year federal grant, which will complete its term June 30 of this year. The funding was to implement environmental prevention projects – or projects that eliminate teen’s ability to get alcohol.
With the $1.3 million grant, one of the programs implemented was the Communities Mobilizing for Change on Alcohol, an effort to curb teen drinking by changing an environment of acceptance. The CMCA efforts involved passing a social host ordinance in Hollister that holds adults liable for serving alcohol to minors in their homes. This year will be the first year the RAMA awards are held, but the goal is to continue the awards year after year.
“CMCA employs a range of social organizing techniques to address legal, institutional, social and health issues in order to reduce youth alcohol use by eliminating illegal alcohol sales to youth by retailers and obstructing the provision of alcohol to youth by adults,” Hankla wrote in an e-mail. “The strategies directed at the environment are efficient because they affect every member of the target population.”
Hankla cited a 2005 study that found that alcohol is the drug most commonly used by youth – more than marijuana, tobacco or other illicit drugs. Alcohol is also often a factor in the leading causes of death of 15-to-20-year olds, which include motor vehicle crashes, homicides, suicides and other unintentional injuries, according to a 2004 study by the Institute of Medicine.
