Before & After Ban on Alcohol Sponsorship
Who sponsors the event?
Beer company logos are a familiar sight at most fairs and festivals. Research from the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth has demonstrated for years that youth exposure to alcohol sponsorship and promotion encourages youth to drink—and often to excess. Given the high rates of underage and binge drinking nationally, replacing alcohol sponsorship may seem like a good place to start and could result in a reduction in violence, fights, sexual assaults, and auto crashes.
- Replace alcohol vendors as sponsors.
- Implement a policy that bans alcohol sponsorships in your event. This may require partnering with elected officials to pass a local ordinance.
- Scan the midway. Do your carnival games or prizes promote alcohol?
Reduce Alcohol Problems and Engage Your Community
- Require training in Responsible Beverage Service for staff selling alcohol.
- Partner with law enforcement and community prevention coalitions to deliver convenient trainings.
- Role play the management of intoxicated individuals.
- Practice reviewing identification to avoid illegal sales to minors.
- Prohibit servers from consuming alcohol.
- Require all alcohol servers to be 21 years of age or older.
- Develop and enforce consequences for vendors who sell to obviously intoxicated individuals or to minors.
- Conduct regular compliance checks using trained underage decoys in partnership with local law enforcement and community initiatives.
- Visible presence of law enforcement at alcohol booths is a great way to decrease problems related to youth attempting to purchase or over consume.
- Standardize alcohol sales:
- Require mandatory and consistent pricing.
- Limit cup sizes to 12 ounces.
- All beverage cups should be transparent.
- Limit 2 beverages per person, per purchase.
- Prohibit guests from bringing alcohol onto festival grounds.
- Stop serving alcohol one hour before event ends.
- Post signage with alcohol policies in multiple languages at each vendor station.
- Require proof of identification for every customer at every sale.
- Wrist bracelets verifying that “age” has been checked are OK – but can be removed easily and passed to someone under-age. And, they don’t relieve the seller of the ultimate responsibility for serving to a minor.
- Engage alcohol vendors: Fraternal and community serving organizations often are the alcohol vendors at fairs and festivals, using proceeds to finance their activities.
- Celebrate participation in shared responsibility for the communities they serve.
- Promote the good work of the organization rather than the product being sold by eliminating branded alcohol signs at vendor booths.
- Create designated drinking areas such as beer gardens.
- Provide training to health ambassadors and other volunteers in consequences of alcohol misuse and health education.
- It may be easier than you think to find corporate sponsors eager to have their names and logos promoting “healthy” in an innovative way.