NABCA Awards
Maine Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages and Lottery Operations
Education Award $10,000
Focus Area Education | Awareness
Award Year
2019-2020
Responsible Beverage Service Video Project
The Maine Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages and Lottery Operations (BABLO), in conjunction with the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Maine CDC), developed an animated training video to educate servers, bartenders, and liquor store employees across the state on how to prevent selling alcohol to visibly intoxicated individuals. The video highlights effective strategies to prevent sales to intoxicated patrons, including techniques on how to refuse a sale. This video will be used as part of responsible beverage service (RBS) training conducted by the Maine CDC’s Tobacco and Substance Use Prevention and Control program, a longstanding partner of BABLO.
"We are grateful for our partnership with BABLO and for the opportunity to bring this resource to licensees across the states,” said Megan Scott, Substance Use Prevention Program Manager of the Maine CDC. “Providing educational resources to licensees is a critical step in arming them with the best techniques to prevent illegal sales to those who are intoxicated and can be an effective complement to enforcement efforts.”
While RBS training is not mandatory in Maine, several municipalities require the certification. This program ensures sellers and servers of alcoholic beverages are trained to check for ID and to recognize signs of impairment, which ultimately helps to prevent irresponsible sales and use of alcohol.
This video supplements the in-person training by providing both on- and off-premise establishments examples on how to detect impairment. Although the video was originally planned to use live actors, the project pivoted to animation due to complications raised by COVID-19. Even in this new format,
the video successfully met BABLO's goal: The more education that can be provided to people who serve and sell alcohol, the better they can help keep their communities safe.
The video is available on the Maine CDC’s YouTube channel and has 150 views to date, which includes RBS trainings that were conducted after June 2022.
Supplemental Award $50,000
Focus Area Regulatory | Enforcement
Award Year
2021-2022
ENFORCEMENT CAPACITY RESEARCH
Understanding the national landscape of alcohol regulation and enforcement capacity is essential in helping states better assess their own strengths and weaknesses. To better understand their effectiveness compared to other states, the Maine Bureau
of Alcoholic Beverages and Lottery Operations (BABLO) used their NABCA award funds to contract with an alcohol
researcher to develop a study. The researcher interviewed representatives of 45 states and Washington, D.C., and relied on this information to develop a comprehensive report featuring a data analysis of the overall alcohol landscape across participating states in comparison to Maine.
The report found that Maine has lower staffing capacity for alcohol regulation compared to most other states—in fact, Maine has fewer enforcement personnel than all but six of the states in the study. According to the study’s findings, Maine also has insufficient capacity to adequately monitor alcohol that is shipped directly to the consumer (DTC). Right now, Maine allows DTC
shipping for wine, though expanding it to allow other liquor is under consideration. If DTC shipping is expanded, Maine may experience further monitoring challenges. In addition to Maine’s expansive geography straining resources, challenges to the state’s ability to effectively monitor and enforce alcohol control policies also include preventing overservice, a lack of mandated responsible beverage service training for employees, and the lack of authority for BALBO.
The study also indicated topics for future research to better understand states’ alcohol enforcement best practices and has applications outside of Maine, providing comprehensive research on alcohol enforcement capacity for other states as well. Additionally, future study may review and compare states’ various regulatory enforcement models and their effect on health and safety outcomes.