Drive-Thru Liquor Sales In Southern States Causes Concern After Many Deadly Car Accidents

Drive-Thru Liquor Sales In Southern States Causes Concern After Many Deadly Car Accidents

Damn, it’s like having a drive-thru Wet Willies!!

About an hour after an accident killed one of his passengers and left another paralyzed, Robert Casey Kirk registered a blood-alcohol content of .20 — more than twice the legal limit for driving. Some of that alcohol — investigators found 109 opened and unopened beer cans at the crash scene — was purchased at a Longview, Texas, drive-through convenience store, Gregg County, Texas, district court filings show. Texas, like Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Tennessee and other states, allows drive-through sales of packaged alcohol, such as beer and wine. There are no precise numbers on how many states allow the practice, as it is usually left to individual municipalities. John Bowersox of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism did point to a 2004 New Mexico study that found 23 states allowed some drive-up or drive-through liquor sales.

Owners defend the practice, but concern about possible resulting drunken driving crashes and deaths is prompting efforts to outlaw drive-up liquor stores.

•In Rantoul, Ill., a ban on drive-up alcohol sales went into effect May 1.

•Waterloo, Iowa, council members will review in August a zoning revision designed to limit businesses selling alcohol and eliminate new drive-up liquor stores in four neighborhoods.

•A 2011 effort to allow drive-through beer and daiquiri sales in Slidell, La., never made it for a vote after the mayor asked the City Council to let the proposal die.

A 1998 New Mexico study of arrested drunken drivers found many preferred to buy their alcohol from drive-up liquor stores, says the study’s principal investigator, Sandra Lapham, director of the Behavioral Health Research Center of the Southwest in Albuquerque. New Mexico banned drive-through alcohol sales the same year that study was released. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., proposed an amendment to the 1998 federal transportation bill that would have banned the practice nationwide, but the effort failed. “We do know and research has shown that alcohol availability is related to higher rates of alcohol-related crashes,” Lapham said.

Louisiana law, in addition to permitting packaged liquor sales, allows drivers to buy ready-to-drink frozen alcoholic drinks — made with rum, vodka, tequila or other alcohol with concentrations as high as 190-proof — from their cars without breaking the state’s open container law. A violation only occurs if the driver or a passenger removes the lid on the drink, puts a straw through the lid hole or removes part or all of the contents, state law says.

Shreveport, La., drive-up liquor store owner Mike Holland says his employees are responsible — informing customers of applicable open container laws, carefully checking IDs to safe guard against purchases by minors, and refusing service to those already impaired. “Somebody who is intent on drinking and driving is going to do it no matter how they get (the alcohol),” said Holland, who owns four liquor-related businesses, including two drive-up daiquiri stores.

Nationwide, 10,228 people died in 2010 in crashes involving drivers who had a blood-alcohol content of .08 or higher — the legal definition of intoxication. Those deaths accounted for 31% of the nation’s traffic deaths that year, according to data released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in December.

Brian Dobbins, vice-president of Eskimo Hut, a Texas-based drive-through daiquiri business with 23 company-owned and franchise stores from Amarillo to Houston, counters that those drunken drivers aren’t his customers. “We are a family atmosphere store that is trying to give a product to people that don’t want to go to the bar,” said Dobbins, whose company also offers non-alcoholic versions of its drinks.

Wow. They selling 190 proof stuff in drive-thrus out in Louisiana??? SMH.

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