Antiquated State Liquor Policies

Kudos for your two-part expose “of just how far out of step California’s alcohol policies are with society’s current concerns over buying and drinking alcohol, especially teenage drinking” (Dec. 27), and how “California alcohol sales policy strains under the burden of trying to regulate a multitude of community styles and tastes according to a single standard” (Dec. 28). Your spotlight on the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control’s woeful enforcement understaffing and some of its “antiquated rules” and regulations was generally on target.

However, the ABC’s fundamental problems cannot be understood apart from that department’s lowly status in the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency of the governor’s Cabinet. As long as alcohol-beverage public policy is viewed as a matter of business convenience and necessity, and not a public health and safety issue as well, we will continue to suffer the sorts of alcohol-related problems we deserve. The so-called alcohol-control state agency has long been emasculated and undermined by alcohol industry lobbies and their lackeys in the legislative and executive branches of government.

What is now glaringly obvious to localities is the need for an effective state and local partnership, one in which local communities may enhance ABC standards to reduce the variety of problems associated with alcoholic beverage sales and retail outlet density.

RAY CHAVIRA, Member

L.A. County Commission

on Alcoholism

Palmdale

* The points are well-made concerning the lax enforcement history of the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (Dec. 27). And indeed the merchants of our communities do become careless in their management of the sale of alcohol. But, in the last 18 months I have yet to see any news agency direct its attention to the most foolish and careless factors in the deaths of the Fullerton teenagers mentioned in the story. We keep pointing our fingers at the liquor outlets. Negative influences outside the home will always exist regardless of our efforts.

Why are we so hesitant to identify the prime figures in the tragedy, without whose active participation, this tragedy would not have occurred. It was the parents who turned a blind eye to the obvious and allowed their teens to take the unchaperoned all-night trip to the desert. It was the parents who provided the vehicle for the teens to drive to the desert.

We certainly need to improve on the ABC but, more important, we need to stop abdicating our responsibilities as parents and guardians.

CHARLES G. BITTICK

Yorba Linda