“With alcohol, every once in a while it is forgotten as a significant drug of choice with the emphasis on opioids and marijuana and vaping.””

Houghtaling

People stopping in for a six-pack at their Warwick or East Greenwich liquor store could be in a “sticker shock.”

The stickers have nothing to do with the price of their favored drink, but rather are aimed at ensuring alcoholic beverages don’t fall into the hands of minors.

With a Partnerships for Success (PFS) grant the Kent County Prevention Coalition has been working with local liquor stores and restaurants on a campaign to discourage adults from providing alcohol to minors.

The Partnerships for Success (PFS) Grant supports an extended seasonal approach to the campaign, running it through the summer until early fall, according to Jane Sullivan, the project manager for the PFS Grant.

Brightly colored stickers were placed on alcoholic beverages and bags with the message “STOP! It’s illegal to give alcohol to a minor or use a fake ID to buy alcohol,” according to Maureen Gouveia, coordinator of the Warwick Prevention Collaborative and the PFS Sticker Shock campaign in Warwick and East Greenwich.

“We need the adults to make sure that they’re not selling to underage people, we need the adults to reinforce the messages that go out to kids, and we need the adults to model the behavior, so even though we’re trying to eliminate underage drinking, I think it’s the adults that we have to really reach out to and support those messages,” said Bob Houghtaling, director of the East Greenwich Drug Program.

In addition to the stickers, Gouveia said the seven participating liquor stores and restaurants were provided with display cards with information about the risks and fines involved with providing alcohol to minors, as well as resources to seek help. Kathy Sullivan, (no relation to Jane Sullivan) director of the Kent County Prevention Coalition (KCPC), explained that the cards were targeted for different audiences as well, including one for parents, one for young people themselves, and one about alcohol during COVID-19.

While the pandemic has restricted gatherings, Kathy Sullivan said, “We still have a lot of concerns about [minors] accessing alcohol.”

The KCPC is in its third year of the regional coalition model, and this is their first year of doing the PFS Sticker Shock campaign in Warwick and East Greenwich, and their second year in other Kent County towns, Kathy Sullivan said. She noted this was the first year the coalition in Coventry did the Sticker Shock campaign there as well. Funding of the 5-year $145,000 grant was provided by the Department of Behavioral Healthcare Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals.

Houghtaling has worked in collaboration with the KCPC’s Partnerships for Success Grant for the Sticker Shock campaign in East Greenwich for about a year and a half and although they are trying to stop young people from accessing alcohol and making bad choices, the campaign’s target audience is adults.

The KCPC has a mission to promote health and wellness and prevent substance abuse, according to Kathy Sullivan. “Part of our strategic plan is to address underage drinking, so this is one of the strategies that we use to help reduce access to alcohol by minors and remind adults not to provide it to young people,”

She said there are serious consequences of an adult providing alcohol to minors. “There are legal consequences, it’s a criminal act, and usually that starts off as a fine in Rhode Island, so that’s called procurement of alcohol for a minor. The more complicated consequences are if that minor runs into any health difficulties, so this is the worst-case scenario, you provide alcohol to a minor and then they die of alcohol poisoning, so then there could be much more serious legal consequences.”

Besides legal consequences, there are physical and mental consequences to underage drinking that the coalition is trying to prevent, according to Gouveia.

“We like to address some of the other consequences of underage drinking and the risks to our youth like alcohol poisoning, motor vehicle accidents, even accidents just around the house, falls and injuries, inappropriate kind of impulsive decisions that are made while our youth are impaired, and then just the consequences of impairment on brain development at that age.”

The KCPC and PFS grant teams are launching several other initiatives to raise awareness about alcohol abuse, including a TIPS training program, online livestreams, and weekly podcasts, according to Gouveia.

Kathy Sullivan and Houghtaling created a podcast, Prevention During a Pandemic, where they interview local leaders in prevention, mental health, or law enforcement and discuss how COVID-19 has impacted their work in terms of substance abuse prevention.

“With alcohol, every once in a while it is forgotten as a significant drug of choice with the emphasis on opioids and marijuana and vaping,” Houghtaling said. “All too often we forget how potent alcohol is and all the problems that can be caused by alcohol, so it is very timely to be working with Jane and the coalition.” 

According to Gouveia, other communities in Rhode Island and other states across the country also have Sticker Shock programs.

“We’ve really just done a lot of community education, so being able to do the Sticker Shock campaign in addition as one more thing that we can do to prevent the use and overuse and misuse in the community was such an easy thing to jump on board with,” Gouveia said.

2020 Sticker Shock participants include: Colleen Haxton’s Liquors, Warwick; Frenchtown Liquors, East Greenwich; Haxton’s Tollgate Liquor Inc., Warwick; People’s Liquor Warehouse, Warwick; Town Line Fine Wine and Spirits, East Greenwich; Twisted Pizza, East Greenwich and Victor’s Kitchen and Pizzeria, East Greenwich.