by Krystal Zaragoza
Daily Lobo
Results of a study regarding the effectiveness of New Mexico's mandatory alcohol server education program show that alcoholism and DWI are growing problems and that the program is failing at providing alcohol servers with the tools they need.
The study, funded by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Addiction, sought to answer three questions regarding the effects of New Mexico's Alcohol Server Education Act on over-serving alcohol: whether there is increased knowledge in service through the training, the attitudes of alcohol servers toward their own intervention skills and how the training changed how they go about serving the patrons.
Through 41 one-time personal interviews with 51 respondents, researchers used servers, managers and owners, as well as pseudo patrons and interviews with officers of the Special Investigations Division, as data for their study. Research was conducted in Albuquerque, Gallup and Las Cruces and almost all participants in the interviews said that after training if they did not learn something new, they were at least more aware of their serving techniques.
The Alcohol Server Education Act was implemented in 1993 after the night of Christmas Eve 1992, when Melanie and Paul Cravens and their three daughters were driving on I-40 and an intoxicated Gordon House smashed into their vehicle going the wrong way on the interstate, killing everyone but Paul.
The study indicates that when asked what they thought about being responsible for stopping someone from drinking, many respondents did not like the idea and felt like they were not responsible for others' actions.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
"The difference is that they are selling a controlled substance," said Wheeler of the reactions that she received from the servers.
One recommendation made by Wheeler on helping servers be aware of over-serving is to teach the servers various methods of counting drinks to keep track of their patrons' alcohol consumption.
Many of the suggestions from servers on stopping over-serving were related to the training, such as improving teaching methods, teaching different techniques and role-playing.
But Linda Atkinson, director of the DWI Resource Center, suggests that it is not the training that is the problem.
"Our thought is that we need more agencies involved in the policing of this situation," Atkinson said. "If there is a greater presence in the community, not only will the alcohol servers be more aware of their duties, but the patrons will not be as likely to take advantage of the situation, eventually putting all of us at risk when they get behind the wheel of a car."
Although refusal to serve only occurs in about 5 percent of cases, according to the study, the most frequent reason for not over-serving was the law. The team of researchers had many other suggestions for the training program. They recommended that training should focus on liability since many of the servers claimed that over-drinking was not their responsibility.
