Underage
Drinking: Success Stories
Kansas – September 30, 2002
of Problem
Strategies
More
Stories
|
The OJJDP Enforcing the Underage Drinking Laws Initiative supports cooperation between community organizations, enforcement agencies, youth, and other concerned citizens to change local ordinances and enforcement practices.
In Kansas
, Communities Lead the Way on Keg Registration
|
After
many years, prevention advocates in Kansas have
finally won passage of a statewide keg registration law. The Legislature
passed the law only after several communities led the way by passing local
keg registration ordinances.
Kansas, like many States, sees keg parties as a major venue for underage drinking.
Often, police descend on a party to find that no one will admit to knowing
where the keg was purchased. As
one Sheriff put it, ?It?s like the keg fairy dropped them out of the
sky.? Advocates have proposed keg registration several times, but until
recently the bills were consistently defeated. With such difficulty at the
State level, advocates began looking for local solutions.
Frustrated
by the defeats, the Chief of Police in Emporia, Kansas,
asked whether it was possible to have a local ordinance in the absence of
State law. Teresa Walters, of Emporians for Drug Awareness, decided to
find out. She first spoke with the Director of the Kansas ABC, who told
her that there was no preemptive language in State statutes. She also
contacted MADD?s national headquarters, and asked about strategies for
getting keg registration passed. A local physician, Dr. James Barnett,
called every state that had keg registration for information; officials in
those states expressed wholehearted support for their keg registration
laws.
The next step for Emporia was a postcard survey, which included a question about
support for keg registration. More than 90% of respondents said that they
supported such an ordinance! Armed with information from other States and
the results of their
survey, Barnett and Walters took their proposal to the County Commission, where it passed in two meetings.
Once Emporia implemented the ordinance, Walters visited several counties to explain the
rationale behind keg registration. New ordinances soon followed in many of
those counties.