Efforts to reduce alcohol abuse in Newark involve a wide range of players—including University staff, community members, merchants, restaurant owners, religious leaders, students and city and state officials.

Douglas Tuttle, policy scientist in the Institute for Public Administration and former director of public safety at UD, serves as co-chairperson of the Policy and Enforcement Task Group, a subgroup of the Community Committee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) effort.

“Our job,” he says, “has been to look at alcohol problems in Newark from the perspectives of control, enforcement and alternatives and to address behavior associated with high-risk drinking.”

According to Tuttle, his committee is addressing three main areas:

• state and local laws that regulate the sale and use of alcohol,
• research to see what has been done elsewhere to reduce consumption, including model legislation and
• better training of servers

“There is a relationship between the price of alcohol and the rate of consumption,” he says. “As the price falls, drinking rises. The time-limited specials are an incentive to consume more in a short period of time. In Newark, we’re not just talking about a ‘happy hour.’ We’re talking about ‘happy days’ or ‘mug nights’ or ‘half-price pitcher’ specials.”

In a number of other states, time-limited drink offers are illegal, Tuttle says. His committee has looked at legislation around the country that focuses on this problem and what laws work—and which do not—to restrict these practices. An attorney, who formerly was associated with of the Delaware State Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission, is investigating this issue for the RWJF effort.

One of the options, Tuttle says, is that the city might enact a local ordinance that is separate from state law, to discourage time-limited drink specials. However, informing local merchants, inviting them to committee meetings and getting their input is critical to the success of the University-Newark community effort to curb binge drinking.

Another possibility is a modification of the business licensing review process. At present, Tuttle says, restaurant and alcohol-serving licenses are revenue-generating only, involving an annual fee with no quality review.

Exploring the possibility to expand the role of the city licensing process to include quality control—perhaps with a probationary review for new businesses and less frequent review for older businesses without problems—is a possibility. Such a process may involve input from the police and licensing officials to look at the history of an establishment before renewal, Tuttle adds.

According to Tuttle, initial responses from members of the Newark Town and Gown Committee to these ideas generally has been favorable.

There’s a clear understanding, Tuttle says, that city resources are being expended at establishments with problems and responding to complaints by city residents.

A variety of other alcohol-related issues—ranging from driving under the influence to fake ID cards—has been mentioned in committee meetings. To a certain degree, these and other issues contribute to the overall binge drinking problem. But, not every aspect can be addressed or solved, Tuttle says.

“Overall,” he says, “the project has increased dialog among various groups within the town—business owners, students, police, politicians and community leaders.

“There has been an interest by state Alcohol Beverage Control Commission agents in what we are doing, since they have a seat at our table. They are aware of the number of problems that are occurring here, including the problem establishments, and they have a good idea of what we are trying to accomplish. Ideally, we’d like to get the state to reallocate resources to increase the number of agents and assign some to our area.

“All of our efforts are intended to be incremental,” Tuttle says. “The business licensing reviews and limitation of time-limited drink specials will help change the perception of Newark and the character of the town.”