Research to Practice: Malt Liquor Sales

The University of Minnesota School of Public Health's alcohol epidemiology program is conducting a three year study, Local Efforts to Restrict Malt Liquor Sales (LERMLS), to investigate the effects of community restrctions on the sale of malt liquor.

Our three-year study, Local Efforts to Restrict Malt Liquor Sales (LERMLS) has three primary objectives:

1. Determine whether the sale and consumption of malt liquor is perceived as a problem by city officials and document what has been done at the local level to restrict it....This aim will be accomplished by conducting a telephone survey of city officials and staff responsible for alcohol policy-making and enforcement in the 100 largest U.S. cities.
   
   
2. Compare six cities’ efforts to adopt policies to restrict malt liquor sales and determine what factors were critical to their success or failure. This aim will be achieved by conducting a retrospective, comparative case study of three cities that successfully adopted policies that restrict malt liquor sales and three cities that were unsuccessful.
   
   
3. Create a national database that provides summaries of key features of local policies that have been successfully adopted to restrict malt liquor sales on our Alcohol Epidemiology website (http://www.epi.umn.edu/alcohol), which is accessible to local policy makers, law enforcement officials, community groups, and researchers. The database will also include a summary of the literature on malt liquor consumption and policies to restrict its use, model ordinances that cities may wish to adapt to their communities, a summary of factors that may facilitate or impede adoption of these policies, and examples of measures that can be used to evaluate these policies.

Our study builds on findings from our Malt Liquor and Homicide (MLH) study, which investigated the role of alcohol and malt liquor availability and promotion in explaining disparities in homicide rates in inner-city neighborhoods in 10 U.S. cities including Santa Ana, Oakland, San Francisco, Kansas City (KS), Kansas City (MO), St. Paul, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Boston, and Baltimore. The MLH study was funded by the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse.

Additional information on these studiecs can be found at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health's website.