Five years of health promoting work with bottle shops on the Central Coast of NSW Australia. How can we best ensure outlets check ID?

Abstract

Alcohol sales to young customers without checking ID are common, widespread and seemingly resistant to nonpunitive interventions. The NSW Liquor Act could be modified to allow compliance testing and much more practical enforcement. While Central Coast bottle shops have a better record than other Australian areas showing some improvements with our nonpunitive industry education interventions, the results need to improve substantially to stifle primary supply.

Injury prevention and health promotion: A global perspective

“…This series of 14 articles reviews the burden of injuries and violence, evaluates the effectiveness of various interventions, discusses theories and methods that can be adapted for use in various population settings, and illustrates how interventions can be used to improve practice among minority and disadvantaged groups such as First Nation People. This Special Issue contains articles on alcohol and injury, 22–25 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander injury prevention, 26–28 child injury prevention, 25,26,29 drowning prevention, 29,30 falls, 27,31,32 farm safety, 33 first aid 34 and injury surveillance. 35…”

A monitoring and site visit intervention to reduce sales to minors at packaged liquor outlets

“…14,15 In the absence of CPOs for alcohol, pseudo-minors can be employed to attempt to purchase alcohol without identification (ID). [16][17][18] A pseudo-minor is a person aged 18-25 years. Whilst selling alcohol to a pseudo-minor without ID is not illegal, it does demonstrate that the PLO is at risk of selling alcohol to a minor under 18 years and is a breach of the industry run ID25 initiative.…”

“…4 To date, several Australian studies have utilised pseudo-minors to attempt to buy alcohol without ID in both sporting club settings 20,21 as well as PLOs. [16][17][18] The specific focus of this paper is within the PLO setting. Across studies examining PLOs, alcohol sales to pseudo-minors without ID ranged from 21.5% to 68% of attempted purchases.…”

“…Across studies examining PLOs, alcohol sales to pseudo-minors without ID ranged from 21.5% to 68% of attempted purchases. [16][17][18] These variations may be related to the method of pseudo-minor recruitment, prior interventions with the PLO, location of the PLO, media activity around the same time and year of publication . Since the 1990s, the rates of young Australians drinking alcohol has been decreasing.…”

“…16 Our earlier study took a more localised approach. 18 Pseudo-minors were recruited on the basis of being 18 or 19 years. Pseudo-minors visited PLOs annually, over a 5-year period.…”