Jackie Clarkson says measure would help address city's crime problem
Citing unexpected pushback from tavern owners and some of her council colleagues, New Orleans City Councilwoman Jackie Clarkson on Tuesday delayed a vote this week on a pair of laws that would raise the age young people are allowed to enter bars and liquor stores from 18 to 21. The measures instead will be presented to the council's Criminal Justice Committee, likely by mid-March, her spokeswoman Summer Johnston said.
View full sizeNew Orleans City Councilwoman Jackie Clarkson Clarkson is floating the proposals, which would bar 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds from establishments where alcohol is the central business, as yet another measure to address the city's confounding crime problem. She crafted her proposals "with the city attorney, and numerous meetings were held in the planning phase," Johnston said.
"She's just looking for other ways that we can help and keep people safe," Johnston said. "Especially young people."
The effort comes a month after the council voted unanimously to set an 8 p.m. weeklong curfew for juveniles in the French Quarter and part of Faubourg Marigny. Most members at that time also declared their desire to make the change citywide.
That measure appears on Thursday's meeting agenda, but its author, Councilman Jon Johnson, said he plans to defer it so he can conduct more research.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu has not taken a position on Clarkson's ordinances, according to his spokesman.
Johnson, for his part, said he wants to know more about violence in and around bars and about how the proposals "might impact the overall strategy to address the crime problem" before he decides whether to support the new laws.
The council's other five members could not be reached, declined to comment or redirected questions to Clarkson.
Able to enter, but not drink
As it stands, city law mirrors state statutes that allow people 18 and older to enter outlets "where alcoholic beverages are the principal commodity sold" and where "selling liquor is conducted as the principal business."
Under one of Clarkson's proposed ordinances, bars could have their licenses suspended or revoked and face fines if people younger than 21 are found "upon or around" their premises, though the proposal does not specify a distance.
The other ordinance does not detail sanctions for liquor stores, saying only that "no person under the age of 21 years shall be invited or permitted on the premises."
Neither ordinance would apply to owners or employees, meaning people 18 and older could continue to own and work at bars and liquor stores, as current city and state laws allow.
In 1996, the Legislature and then-Gov. Mike Foster raised the state's drinking age from 18 to 21, but they didn't change laws that allow people 18 and older to access bars and liquor stores. At the time, Louisiana was the only state that allowed 18- to 20-year-olds to drink, and federal highways officials threatened to hold back about $17 million a year unless the drinking age was changed to 21.
Across the country, rules vary. Some states restrict access to bars and liquor stores to everyone younger then 21. Others allow children younger than 18 to drink alcohol in public when accompanied by their parents. Many states allow 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds to sell and serve alcohol.
'It's their business'
Troy Hebert, commissioner of the state Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control, said that while the governing bodies of some wards, districts and municipalities across Louisiana and of one parish -- West Carroll -- have opted to go "dry" and prohibit all alcohol sales, he's not aware of any jurisdiction that has imposed a higher minimum age than 18 for entry to a bar or liquor store.
Most local elected bodies leave it up to individual bar and shop owners to set age limits, Hebert said, adding that many in New Orleans and elsewhere don't allow patrons to enter until they reach age 21. Others, he said, prefer a more mature crowd and set the age limit at 25 or 30.
"It's their business," he said. "They can make it whatever they want."
Clarkson's legislative director, Joe Rochelle, pointed to a 1996 state attorney general's opinion that lets a municipality set a more restrictive age limit than the one in state law "so long as the regulation 'is necessary for the protection of the public health, morals, safety, and peace.'"
"Arguably, if the presence of minors impedes enforcement of city and state law, the city can regulate the entrance of those who cannot legally drink. Thus, it is very common for some municipalities to our north and west to enact 'blue laws,'" Rochelle wrote in an email.
It was not immediately clear whether local law enforcement agencies have struggled to enforce the legal drinking age because younger patrons can enter bars and liquor stores, though Clarkson told WWL-TV on Monday that it is indeed the case.
"When you have a bunch of 18-year-olds in there, you can't police whether or not they're drinking, so it's made for total confusion," she said. "It's out of control, and it's young people that are out on the streets causing fights, young people that are causing problems for the criminal justice system."
Looking at the statistics
Clarkson's staff could not immediately provide statistics to support her claim, and an NOPD spokeswoman did not immediately respond to questions about whether the existing state law makes it difficult to enforce the drinking age or heightens the incidence of crime.
National data from 2007, the latest year on record with the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, indicate that violent incidents involving alcohol were more than twice as likely as other violent incidents to occur in a bar, nightclub, or restaurant.
That said, just 8.3 percent of violent incidents involving alcohol happened near a bar or club, compared with 66.6 percent of those crimes that happened at a residence.
Juvenile offenders also were less likely to be involved in violent incidents that involved alcohol than those that did not, the data show.
Of all alcohol-related cases on record for 2007, 18- to 20-year-olds were identified as offenders just 6.6 percent of the time in the national survey. In violent incidents that didn't involve alcohol, people in that age group were pegged as offenders at nearly twice that rate.
John Eck, a criminology professor at the University of Cincinnati, said a high proportion of bar-related violence probably happens near a "small fraction" of bad establishments.
"Regulating the age people can enter a bar only makes sense if there is good evidence that young people are a) disproportionately the offenders or victims of violence, b) this violence is associated with bars, and c) bar-related violence involving young people is spread across most bars," he said in an email message.
While the first two criteria might be true, Eck said that in his experience studying high-crime places, "the third criteria is highly unlikely."
"Regulating all bars because a few are poorly managed makes little sense to me," he said. "Focusing on the worst bars makes more sense."
Michelle Krupa can be reached at mkrupa@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3312.