Other shoes are dropping on the 2011 initiative that got Washington state government out of the liquor business.
Just under 59 percent of Washington voters approved Initiative 1183 just over two years ago. A recently released study points out a couple of big downsides of these new private liquor sales:
- An increase in the number of liquor thefts.
- An increase in the number of liquor-related emergency-room visits.
The research reports that young people are particularly involved in and affected by both of these.
The House Early Learning & Human Services Committee and the House Public Safety Committee recently met jointly to hear a report on this report. Here’s the PowerPoint presentation that was shared at that meeting.
According to the study, which was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, various police agencies around Washington have reported a significant increase in liquor thefts. A key finding: “Ten percent of high-school students who drink reported stealing liquor from a store in the past year.” As for the jump in alcohol-related trips to the emergency room, there were 5,500 “excess” emergency-room visits in King County alone reported in the 16 months following privatization of liquor sales.
This legislative session, a proposal aimed at combating liquor theft is making its way through Olympia. House Bill 2155 passed the House, 93-4, earlier this month. The bill will get a public hearing in the Senate Commerce & Labor Committee at 8 o’clock Friday morning, Feb. 28. Among other new directions in Washington law, this bipartisan bill would:
- Authorize the state Liquor Control Board (LCB) and law-enforcement agencies to regulate liquor-selling stores to cut the number of thefts.
- Authorize the LCB to impose remedial requirements on stores that are experiencing an especially high number of such thefts.
In previous committee testimony, law-enforcement representatives talked about the greatly increasing rate of liquor-thievery. A lack of sufficient staffing (particularly at night) and sufficient staff-training in the bigger stores were cited as large problems.