May 25, 2022 Vol. 20

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The National Liquor Law Enforcement Association (NLLEA) is a non-profit association

of law enforcement personnel dedicated to the enforcement of liquor laws and regulations.

Click Here to Renew 2022-23 NLLEA Membership

To renew your NLLEA Agency Membership for 2022-23 go to www.nllea.org and log in with your email and password.   Click on my agency, (right below your name) that will take you to your agency page, then click on renew membership, it is a purple button in left corner, then enter your credit card information and hit submit. If you have any problems at all just call Carrie Christofes, Executive Director at 724-762-5939 and she will take your payment over the phone. 

Click Here to Register for the 2022 NLLEA Conference

Conference Registration and Hotel Booking are Now Available

Registration is $500.00 for members and $650.00 for non-members

Hotel Accomodations for NLLEA Guests is $149.00/night

NLLEA Conference is a professional law enforcement event, open to NLLEA members, qualified non-members, public health professionals and exhibitors

Click Here for Sergeant-at-Arms Application

Sergeant-at-Arms Nominations

The National Liquor Law Enforcement Association (NLLEA) Executive Board is seeking self-nominations for the 2022 Sergeant-at-Arms position for the Board. This is a volunteer position. Elections will be held during the Business Meeting at the 35th Annual NLLEA Conference being held September 26-28 at the Sheraton Hotel Station Square in Pittsburgh, PA. 

photo by, Billy Fellin, Virginia ABC


Storm has seen the positive impact that her service has had on others. She recalled an incident at a concert venue where she ran into a woman she’d previously arrested. The woman hugged Storm, throwing her off-guard.

“She thanked me and said that [arrest] had changed her life. And that, after that, she had made a conscientious effort to move in a different direction. She was now sober, and she had a good job,” Storm said. “You usually hear about the negative impact of the action you may have taken…so to have somebody share with you how they were able to turn that experience into a positive outcome was pretty cool.”

A Look at an ABC Agent’s Career

By Nick Vandeloecht

Virginia ABC Communications


ABC Special Agent in Charge Barbara Storm

DUI crashes highlight difficulty to enforce Utah's overserving law

Utah has laws against overserving alcohol. If a bar is found to be overserving, the case is referred to the Utah Department of Alcohol and Beverage Control where they could face anything from a fine up to losing their liquor license.

But there is a criminal side as well.

“There’s also a law that is criminal in nature for the individual or employee who actually serves the intoxicated person,” said Lt. Jeff Adams, who works with the alcohol enforcement team at the SBI. Their SIP, or serving intoxicated person, investigations look for problems with bars or restaurants overserving.

“I think overservice is a huge issue," Lt. Adams said. "The hard part for us is to be in the right place at the right time to document what we see and be able to put together a good case.”

He said bar owners and employees do have an obligation not to overserve customers.

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Monitoring alcohol in your bloodstream via your phone will soon be a reality

An easy-to-use device that measures alcohol in your system via a smartphone app has been invented by a research team of biomedical engineers.

The painless wearable sensor, which aims to make health decisions easier for the public in general and people with diabetes specifically, takes a measurement for blood sugar, lactate levels and the amount of alcohol in a person’s body.

A California-based research team has published a paper in Nature Biomedical Engineering debuting a prototype of a sensor to be worn on the skin that with the help of a smartphone app will take these readings.

While the project is in its early stages, according to the researchers they’re hopeful that the device will be brought to market soon.

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Stronger age verification needed for alcohol e-commerce

New research has revealed that online age verification checks for alcohol purchases are ‘insufficient’, and the industry is ‘struggling to effectively protect underage people’.

The research was carried out by charity Alcohol Change UK and Wales-based Wrexham Glyndŵr University, and led by Martin Wilson, chief executive officer of Digital Identity Net.

It showed that retailers are relying on tick boxes and online forms for consumers to confirm their age when purchasing alcohol online, which can be ‘easily bypassed’, according to the team.

According to the study, the value of e-commerce alcohol sales is projected to grow by 74% between 2020 and 2024. Additionally, a test purchase operation was carried out, which found that in 72% of cases where alcohol was ordered for delivery within two hours, bottles were handed over without deliverers seeking proof of age.

Delivery drivers were also found to be confused about different retailers’ policies on age verification – some retailers rely on credit cards to prove the purchaser is an adult, according to Alcohol Change UK.

The results have led to the conclusion that a downfall in the current online age verification is outdated legislation – The Licensing Act came into effect in 2005, and was written before online alcohol sales boomed.

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Alcohol marketing has crossed borders and entered the metaverse – how do we regulate the new digital risk?

The alcohol industry is now showing its initiative by entering the emerging metaverse. To understand the metaverse, according to one commentator, you should

take today’s social media, add a splash of sophisticated 3D, fold in a plethora of options for entertainment and gaming, garnish it all with data-driven personalisation, and you are all set to take away your order of a supersized social media network, the metaverse.

In terms of marketing, this provides a new opportunity. The biometric data essential to a virtual reality experience is also available to develop “biometric psychographics”, allowing for the even greater personalisation of advertising.

Virtual alcohol brands created and used by avatars in the metaverse support the development of brand allegiance in real life, and virtual reality will transform e-commerce experiences and increase the power of sponsorship.

AB InBev, the largest global alcohol corporation, was an early adopter of the metaverse. One of its brands, Stella Artois, is sponsoring the Australian Zed Run platform on which virtual horses can be raced, bred and traded. The Zed Run platform experienced 1,000% growth in early 2021.

Regulating to reduce alcohol harm

The digital world is extremely dynamic. It is also opaque to most policy makers and public health practitioners. It is telling that there is no reference to the metaverse as a cross-border alcohol marketing opportunity in the WHO report.

There is an urgent need for debate regarding how policy makers should better understand the risks involved with the targeted marketing of hazardous products such as alcohol.

The WHO report outlines various partial and unsuccessful approaches to regulating marketing in the digital media.

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Greenville restaurant served as hub for cocaine and meth trafficking operation, AG says

An Upstate restaurant served as a regional hub through which cocaine and methamphetamine were allegedly trafficked to other states, according to South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson.

Wilson announced Wednesday that the South Carolina Grand Jury has issued indictments in a drug trafficking case known as “Los Banditos.”

According to the news release, many of the drugs were allegedly trafficked right out of the restaurant, while more were allegedly trafficked out of taco trucks owned by the owners of the restaurant.

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Kentucky ABC providing free date rape drug tests to Louisville bars

After a rise in reports of drugs being slipped into drinks at some Louisville bars, city leaders are taking action to prevent sexual assaults.

"It's gone up, I've never seen it like this," said Lt. Brad Silveria with Louisville Metro Alcohol Beverage Control. "There's been several victims that have been preyed upon. What we've been seeing reports of are that women wake up, they can tell they've been sexually assaulted and they don't know how they got where they got."

Following a rise in suspected use of drugs like Rohypnol or "roofies" to incapacitate victims, Silveria and other ABC officers are partnering with Metro Councilwoman Cassie Chambers Armstrong (D-8) to hand out free cards and stickers that test for common date rape drugs, to area bars. The stickers can be placed on the back of phones and the cards can be kept easily in purses or wallets to be readily accessible.

Louisville Metro Police and ABC have been alerting the community about the increase in the number of reports where investigators suspect these drugs were involved. Many of these incidents happened at bars in the Highlands which is why the program is being rolled out there first.

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KS-City to further discuss proposed streateries/sidewalk café program

Hays city commissioners will resume their discussion of a streatery and sidewalk café policy during their work session this evening.

On April 21, commissioners talked about rules and regulations regarding alcohol consumption, location, footprint use, structural and safety requirements, and insurance requirements. Hays Police Chief Don Scheibler and Justin Whyte, Kansas ABC (Alcohol Beverage Control) enforcement agent for the area, were on hand to answer questions about state alcoholic beverage laws.

They came to a consensus on many of the considerations, according to Asst. City Manager Collin Bielser, and a draft policy will be presented Thursday for further review and possible approval.

"Alcohol possession and consumption will be allowed as long as state law and ABC are followed," Bielser said.  

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MO-Columbia liquor store could lose license after fatal January crash

DASH Convenience and Liquor Store, a downtown Columbia store, could lose its liquor license in June. A Missouri State Highway Patrol investigation found it sold liquor to a minor who was involved in a fatal crash in January.

Through seized video evidence, investigators found the store illegally sold alcohol to 19-year-old Keith Sumner on Jan. 3, according to a press release. That same day, Sumner was involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 63 that killed four people, including himself, and seriously injured three children.

The investigation also found evidence of multiple prior incidents of that same minor being sold alcohol, as well as other sales to minors without asking for identification, the release said.

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Alcohol Misuse And Gun Violence: What We Know

While politicians and media give a lot of attention to mental health in relation to gun violence, such a link has not been established in research. In fact, roughly 3 to 5% of violent crime is thought to be caused by people with a mental illness.

By contrast, alcohol misuse is much more of a risk factor for gun violence. A link between the two has been widely established in medical research:

  • A 2015 study from the University of California, Davis, found that death rates from alcohol-related gun violence were higher than those from car crashes.
  • Another study published in 1997 in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that non-drinkers living in a home with alcohol users were at increased risk of homicide.
  • Most recently, a 2019 UC Davis study found that California gun buyers with prior DUI convictions were more than 2.5 times more likely to be arrested later for violent crimes, including violent crimes using firearms.

Rose Kagawa, a professor at the UC Davis’s Department of Emergency Medicine, is the lead author on that last study.

Kagawa says while there’s a wealth of research linking alcohol use and violence, two studies over the last few years from UC Davis, including her most recent, have focused on what happens when guns are also easily accessible:

“If you think of our [gun] background check systems … they are a prediction tool to identify people at highest risk for committing future violence,” Kagawa said. “This study established DUI [conviction] as a risk factor for later being charged with a violent crime, including a violent crime with a firearm.”

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If you have Alcohol Law Enforcement news to share please send it to Carrie Christofes, Executive Director carrie.christofes@nllea.org

2021-22 NLLEA Board Members:

Todd Merlina, President - PA - tmerlina@pa.gov

Thomas Kirby, Vice President - VA - thomas.kirby@virginiaabc.com

Israel Morrow, Secretary/Treasurer - NC - israel.morrow@ncdps.gov

Jim Diana, Sergeant at Arms - DE -james.diana@delaware.gov

John Yeomans, President - DE - john.yeomans@delaware.gov

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