Beer, wine sales to street drinkers target of mayor
From our weekly issue dated July 16, 2008
Ted Bell at Siskiyou Market discusses the mayor’s request with Tony Paulson. (Photo by Michelle Binker, I.V. News)
Cave Junction Mayor Tony Paulson has asked business owners who sell packaged alcohol within city limits to help combat public drunkenness.
Noting that public intoxication and related behaviors “continue to plague our community,” Paulson delivered a letter to six businesses in Cave Junction with carry-away liquor licenses, urging them to stop selling alcohol to persons commonly known to be “street alcoholics.”
Mayor Tony Paulson rousts a man who appeared to be intoxicated at the Cave Junction Fire Station. (Photo by Michelle Binker, I.V. News)
Drawing attention to Oregon Revised Statutes pertaining to alcohol and controlled substances, Paulson stated that while the city cannot adopt an ordinance that makes public drunkenness a criminal violation, he pointed out that ORS 471.030(1)(c) clearly states, “No person shall sell, give or otherwise make available any alcoholic liquor to any person who is visibly intoxicated.”
The six stores are Shop Smart Food Warehouse, Siskiyou Market, CJ 76, Speedy Mart, Perfect Pizza Plus, and Taylor’s Country Store.
“On behalf of the citizens and business owners,” Paulson wrote, “I would request of those that sell alcohol to exercise their right to refuse service and not sell any alcohol to the extreme ‘street’ alcoholics.”
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“This continues to be an ever-growing issue,” he continued. “I can supply photos of continuous abusers; however, I believe that you and your employees know them by sight, if not by name,” the mayor wrote.
“We want them to stop selling alcohol to these people,” Paulson said. He’s concerned that the image of intoxicated persons hanging out or sleeping on sidewalks in town is diminishing the appearance of the city from the point of view of people passing through.
He noted that the move might help businesses recover otherwise “lost sales” -- consumers who’ve made the decision to shop elsewhere to avoid encountering belligerent or otherwise offensive persons who drink and then hang out at Jubilee Park or around town.
Other businesses have complained of street people who urinate in public or defecate behind businesses. Paulson related how he’d been phoned by a crying mother whose 11-year-old girl had been called filthy names by an intoxicated man near Jubilee Park.
“We’re only talking about a dozen people,” said the mayor. “It’s not a huge population, but they’re the ones being rude,” Paulson stressed.
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The mayor took his plea to the package-store owners in person, delivering the letter and following up. During a visit to Siskiyou Market, manager Ted Bell thought that there could be civil rights repercussions from not selling to someone – a concern that Paulson said he’s heard frequently, but for which he can find no legal basis.
Although it’s illegal to sell to someone who is intoxicated, the problems, Bell notes, are still evident after they’ve made a purchase while still sober.
“Use your right to say no,” Paulson urged him, “You say, ‘Because I know who you become and what you do, I’m not serving you’.”
“I agree with you,” Bell conceded, “but I just wonder about the legal implications.”
Paulson stated that Patrick Kelly, the city’s attorney, expressed amazement that the business owners would be unaware that they have the right to refuse to sell to someone as long as they are not discriminating on the basis of race or ethnicity, sex, religion or nationality.
In Portland, the 100-store chain Plaid Pantry has had a long-standing corporate policy against selling alcohol to chronic abusers who appeared to be living on the street.
Chris Girard, Plaid Pantry’s president, said that the policy had been developed in coordination with the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, city of Portland and neighborhood groups to discourage street alcoholism.
“If they are known to drink in public, that’s illegal,” Girard said. “They have no right to break the law.”
Girard concedes that these policies don’t cure the alcoholics, it simply disperses them. And restrictions on the type and package size of alcohol available in identified “alcohol impact areas” simply causes them to shift to smaller quantities of more potent beverages.
“What we’ve seen is a percentage have turned to cheap vodka in small bottles,” he said.
Bell said that after taking over Siskiyou Market some 20 years ago he eliminated fortified wines such as Night Train and Thunderbird from the shelves. But he balks at the thought of not stocking beer and malt liquor.
“Would I stop carrying malt liquor? No,” Bell said. “I have a lot of really good customers that are law-abiding citizens, who work every day of their lives and buy malt liquor. There is a difference between those (chronic street alcoholics) and hard-working people.”
Though skeptical of the mayor’s proposal, Bell allowed that he’d like to see the problem go away. Other store owners, equally skeptical, have excluded some people from their stores based on their offensive odors and demeanor. But they know that other people make purchases for them.
“If you can come up and show me some statutes backed by a lawyer’s example then I would be more than happy to do this,” he told Paulson.
But by the end of the day Friday, July 11, after talking with store owners – and even personally rousting an intoxicated man from in front of I.V. Fire District’s Cave Junction station -- Paulson said that business owners seemed most concerned about a lawsuit or confrontation.
“This can’t be the cornerstone of everybody’s business,” he said in exasperation. “I think if I can get one store to start, the others would follow.”
