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| Dry
Drunks |
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| Pioneer
Square Gets Sort of Sober. Will anyone notice? |
| by
Jeanne Ryan and Adam Holdorf |
According to residents and business owners
in Pioneer Square, the presence of homeless
alcoholics — in policy wonks’ terms,
chronic public inebriates — hurts businesses
and residents. The city Department of Neighborhoods
wants the state Liquor Control Board to designate
the neighborhood an Alcohol Impact Area and
ban the sale of high-potency, low-cost alcoholic
beverages.
As the Seattle City Council prepares to vote
on a formal request, the question arises:
What will happen when you cut off the flow
of cheap booze to one neighborhood’s
convenience stores? Is it a way to save the
lives of the estimated 500 late-stage alcoholics?
Or just another means of whisking them away?
In 1999, the Liquor Control Board created
a new tool for local governments wishing to
curb public drunkenness. Cities or counties
could petition the state agency to designate
a troubled section in their jurisdiction as
an Alcohol Impact Area (AIA) — a place,
in the state’s terms, "adversely
affected by chronic public inebriation or
illegal activity associated with alcohol sales
or consumption." The Liquor Control Board
must find that the local government’s
claims are valid; if it does, certain types
of alcohol will be banned.
In Pioneer Square, convenience stores would
no longer be able to sell low-cost, high-potency
beers like Mickey’s, Old English, and
211 Steel Reserve, or strong, sweet wines
like Thunderbird. That ban would have the
force of law behind it: If convenience stores
continue to sell, they could be fined or lose
their licenses. Before that’s possible,
says the Liquor Control Board, local communities
must try to persuade stores to voluntarily
discontinue such sales.
These campaigns haven’t worked, because
of small merchants’ addiction to the
money they make from sales of rotgut booze.
And when the state Liquor Control Board recognized
this and stepped in to establish an Alcohol
Impact Area in Tacoma, the industry followed
the letter, not the spirit, of the law; it
repackaged its banned products. The city’s
neighborhood-by neighborhood strategy —
help Pioneer Square first, and others next
— has Capitol Hill in a tizzy, worried
that homeless drunks will migrate to their
neighborhood. And real help for alcoholics
is also drying up: despite years of rhetorical
support for treatment from government officials
and neighborhood activists, the Cedar Hills
Addiction Treatment Center is closing this
year because of county budget cuts.
The campaigns for voluntary compliance are
at varying stages of failure: in Pioneer Square,
after a year and a half, a few bad apples
continue to offer homeless alcoholics a way
to get drunk and pass out in Occidental Park.
On Capitol Hill, only nine of the 28 stores
licensed to sell liquor have signed. Among
those nine, not all are complying. If merchants
there aren’t voluntarily taking rotgut
off their shelves, why not expand the current
effort at City Council, and ask the Liquor
Control effort to ban cheap booze on the Hill?
Or in Belltown, where campaigns for voluntary
compliance have been waged, and aborted, since
1998.
Gary Johnson, who works for the city’s
Department of Neighborhoods, says Pioneer
Square made a fuss early and often.
"When the state finally created this
AIA rule, Pioneer Square jumped on it and
asked the city for help. We responded to that
request," he says. Also, to assure that
the state regulators would act, "we wanted
to focus on an area that’s been seen
as a problem for years."
But neighborhoods from lower Queen Anne to
Broadway to the International District "have
a case to make" for their own problems,
says Johnson — and they’ll get to
make it, with the mayor’s blessing, once
Pioneer Square goes first.
Johnson says that Mayor Greg Nickels supports
a ban for Pioneer Square; after that takes
effect, the city will approach state regulators
in order to restrict sales in a larger area,
encompassing lower Queen Anne, Capitol Hill,
Belltown, the downtown commercial core, and
the International District. Pioneer Square
resident Casey Jones, a proponent of the Alcohol
Impact Area rule, says he will support other
neighborhoods as they try to rid drinking
from their streets.
As city officials have helped Pioneer Square
along, Johnson says there’s been a ripple
effect — in public opinion, not necessarily
in public drunkenness. "Other neighborhoods
started perceiving a big increase in street
alcoholism," he says. Is the increase
in drunkenness in other neighborhoods fact
or illusion? There’s still no answer,
according to the city’s report on Pioneer
Square’s efforts.
If Seattle wants to learn a lesson from a
failed ban, it should look south to Tacoma,
where state alcohol regulators banned certain
brands of beer and wine, only to have merchants
find a loophole.
The Liquor Control Board approved Tacoma’s
AIA on December 12, and Tacoma provided a
list of proscribed beverages. Specific products
were chosen because of their low price and
high alcohol content. After the ban took effect,
it was old wine in new bottles: retailers
were found selling similar products in different
sizes or containers.
"The industry exhibited great flexibility"
in coming up with new alternatives, says Johnson,
who has watched the process. Since then, the
Liquor Control Board expanded the list, leaving
retailers 30 days to deplete their stock of
banned items. While shops could conceivable
flout the law once again, Johnson doubts that
they will. The liquor industry "has to
be careful not to piss [state regulators]
off too much," he says — or they’d
face more draconian regulatory action.
Now, the liquor industry, the state, Tacoma
city officials, and Seattle representatives
are trying to define the kind of products
that should be banned: cheap, potent beverages,
no matter what size container they come in.
No matter how you define it, some products
will hover close to the danger zone. The criteria
for prohibition is "a little bit up in
the air," says Johnson. "You say
7.0 percent alcohol beer is banned; what if
the industry makes beer that’s 6.9 percent
alcohol?"
Phillip Wayt, of the Washington Beer and Wine
Wholesalers Association, argues that Tacoma’s
original list was not well researched. "The
products must be reasonably linked to the
problem. King Cobra Malt Liquor hasn’t
been sold for the past five years, but it
was on the list," he says. The Liquor
Control Board also believes that a clear list
of banned products is necessary in order for
them to inspect and enforce prohibition; it
would be too hard to judge every product simply
on ratio.
Critics of the new rule argue that it is simply
another form of prohibition and it does not
get to the root of the problem, individual
alcoholism. They also point the finger at
the merchants who sell their products.
Wayt argues, "Banned products will not
work. As an industry, we have history to look
back at, and the country learned years ago
that prohibition didn’t work. Chronic
public inebriates will simply drink other
products, or go somewhere else. These folks
need treatment. There are plenty of laws and
regulations for the police and Liquor Control
Board to discipline those that break the current
law: for example, retailers should not be
allowed to sell to people who are clearly
intoxicated.
At the Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC),
Bill Hobson deals with alcoholism and drug
abuse every day. Skeptical of the effectiveness
of an alcohol impact area, he says that he
is mildly in favor of the rule. "Frankly,
I think there will be another drink du jour…but
it probably makes sense." With so many
of his colleagues in favor of the rule, he
believes there must be something to it, but
he doesn’t know if it will affect homeless
alcoholics.
Hobson is working on the treatment side of
chemical dependency, and his familiarity with
the issue has led him to take on a very practical
stance. Serving people who have spent 15 to
20 years drinking outside, he knows why more
treatment options are necessary. Late-stage
alcoholics, many of them homeless, have tried
inpatient treatment many times, only to fail.
They have only a 2 percent likelihood of ever
achieving abstinence from all alcohol.
Part of the solution is coming, in the form
of DESC’s "wet" housing program,
where management will not require tenants
to abstain from alcohol, in order to try to
keep alcoholics safe and indoors. The 75-unit
apartment building is slated to open in December
2003 on 1811 Eastlake, on the outskirts of
downtown. Hobson says that it can provide
homeless alcoholics with treatment more cheaply
than the current system.
But 75 units of housing won’t meet the
need. And when Cedar Hills Treatment Center
shuts down later this year, there will be
far fewer recourses available for people who
can afford to pay for their own inpatient
treatment.
Cedar Hills is already losing staff and patients.
The Maple Valley facility, usually provides
30-day to six-month residential treatment
for 180 people; last month it housed 100.
The county has laid off a nurse that cared
for 60 mentally ill, addicted patients.
When County Councilmember Larry Gossett toured
Cedar Hills in late June, "Patients told
him that there aren’t enough places that
offer safe, sober, clean housing that will
accommodate all of them," recalls Cedar
Hills director Jodi Riley-Kauer.
"Everyone’s been telling us, ‘it’s
not an issue of where there’s anything
wrong with the treatment, or with the building
— it’s just that there’s no
money," she says.
When Cedar Hills closes, the handful of private
treatment facilities might contract with the
state to provide its services. But treatment
costs anywhere from $69 to $96 per person
per day; the state has paid only $37. If a
private company wants to make up the difference,
more power to them; but the county is done
sharing the bill.
More money to fulfill Cedar Hills’ mission
may come around eventually, when the state
implements Senate Bill 6361, passed this winter
to reduce jail time for drug-related offenses
and pass the savings on to fund treatment.
But Riley-Kauer says her facility can’t
hold out. "By the time they implement
that law, in 2004, we won’t be around,"
she said.
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