Battle against illegal drinking heads to stores

By Denice Thibodeau
Danville Register & Bee
Published: June 3, 2008

Underage drinkers in Danville and Pittsylvania County will find it a little more difficult to purchase alcohol, thanks to a new program launched Monday by the Regional Alliance for Substance Abuse Prevention (RASAP) and the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

The program, IDCheck: Reducing Sales to Underage Youth, is providing all convenience stores in the city and county with a handbook that outlines how to properly check IDs, how to spot fake IDs and what the penalties can be for selling alcohol to underage drinkers.

The handbooks include a training class on CD, tests for the owners and employees, and a driver’s license guide that shows photographs of licenses and ID cards from every state.

Employees who successfully pass the test can get an IDCheck card from RASAP that is good for a year. They have to take the test again to get an updated ID card.

The handbook also is full of statistics about underage drinking, including these results from a 2007 survey of Danville and Pittsylvania County
students:

• About half of high school students reported having had at least one drink of alcohol during their lifetime (not including a few sips for religious purposes).
• Just under 20 percent of these students reported having consumed alcohol in the previous 30 days. This indicated that they did not just “try” alcohol once, but that they are using it regularly.
• Fifteen percent reported “binge drinking.” Binge drinking is when someone consumes five or more drinks a day.
• Nearly 50 percent of the high school students surveyed reported alcohol as easy to get.

Making alcohol much harder to get is the goal of the IDCheck program, according to ABC special agent Jesse Tate III.

The program was launched Monday morning at Charlie’s Stop & Shop on Franklin Turnpike near the intersection of North Main Street.

“RASAP did a fantastic job of putting this thing together,” Tate told storeowner Don Deboe. “It’s another tool you’ve got in your arsenal (to combat underage sales).”

Deboe agreed, saying the handbook is better than trying to send employees to training classes that are often cancelled because too few people have registered to attend.

“This is a great idea,” he said. “There won’t be any excuses now (for selling to underage drinkers).”

Kelly Doss, RASAP’s executive director, said the handbooks will be mailed to the other 118 convenience stores in Danville and Pittsylvania County this week.

Contact Denice Thibodeau at or (434) 791-7985.