STATE ISN'T BLOCKING UNDERAGE ALCOHOL SALES

What will it take to stop store clerks from selling beer to
minors?

It's clear current rules don't work. Sting operations since September
have yielded charges of illegal sales at half of the businesses tested
in Volusia County. Many store clerks also sold tobacco to underage
operatives.

Without including numbers from a similar sting Friday night, visits to
55 stores over the past three months netted 28 violations. The charges
included clerks at chain and independent convenience stores.

The incidence is shameful and might be worse than the numbers
indicate. When the sting operations started in September, a much
higher percentage of the businesses tested were willing to sell to
underage drinkers. Police believe word of the stings got around, and
the number of arrests went down.

The Legislature has wrestled with underage drinking time and again.
But almost without fail corporate business interests have prevailed,
in recent years even managing to wrest more protection and loosen some
penalties.

The result is a law that coddles big corporations while getting tough
with mom-and-pop stores. Convenience-store clerks - who face
second-degree misdeameanor charges for a first offense - are
essentially rendered disposable while the companies that pay them
minimum wage get off scott-free.

Addressing this inequity would go a long way toward choking off
illegal sales of beer, wine, chewing tobacco and cigarettes to minors.

Florida's law is rife with loopholes. The person or corporation that
holds the license to sell alcohol doesn't face any penalty on first
and second offenses unless they're on the premises or had reason to
believe illegal sales are taking place. That makes the law much
harsher for sole proprieters, who are apt to be on the property at any
time of day or night. Corporate officers of large chains are unlikely
to be behind the counter at 8 p.m. on a Saturday.

For the chain stores, the license doesn't come under attack until
employees of a particular store are caught selling alcohol three times
in a 12-week period. Then an individual store - not the chain - is hit
with a seven-day suspension. Law enforcement officials say it's very
hard to catch an individual outlet of a chain convenience store in
that third violation, so many chain stores never face discipline for
selling to minors.

Disciplinary records prove that chain stores have no trouble
insulating themselves from threats to their profitable licenses.
Despite continuing efforts by law enforcement and the local division
of the Bureau of Alcohol and Tobacco, it's been more than four years
since an outlet of a major convenience-store chain has faced any type
of alcohol-sales license suspension.

Volusia County Sheriff Bob Vogel, whose office conducted the sting
along with state officials, says he's discouraged by the ease in which
businesses escape any threat to their bottom line. He's right to keep
trying, but the real burden should be on the Legislature.

Lawmakers must get the attention of the major retailers in the state,
and force them to understand that selling alcohol and tobacco to
minors will cost them, heavily.