What are alcohol home delivery restrictions
and how do they work?

Home delivery restrictions regulate liquor stores that offer delivery of alcoholic beverages to personal residences. A home delivery policy may:

• Prohibit or ban the delivery of alcohol to residential addresses.
  
• Place restrictions on home deliveries.

Banning or restricting home deliveries may be part of a local ordinance or a state law. Communities that do not want to completely ban home deliveries can impose the following restrictions:

• Require that delivery personnel be age 21 years or older.
  
• Restrict the days of the week and times of the day during which alcohol can be delivered to residential addresses.
  
• Restrict the amount of alcohol that can be delivered.
  
• Require delivery people to verify, via a legal age identification card, that the buyer is 21 or older, and also require the delivery person to document:
  1. The name of the purchaser
     
  2. The purchaser's address and driver's license or state identification card number
     
  3. The time, date, place of delivery
     
  4. The quantity and brand of alcohol delivered
     
  5. The name of the delivery person
     

  Alcohol outlets should be required to keep these invoices for a period of time and should be required to make them available to law enforcement authorities upon request.
  

• Prohibit sales of alcohol through the Internet by banning direct shipments of alcohol to personal residences.

Why alcohol home delivery regulations/bans are important for your community

• Underage youth use home delivery services to purchase alcohol. Ten percent of 12th graders and 7% of 18- to 20-year-olds in 15 midwestern communities reported that they obtained alcohol through delivery services in the last year. Use of delivery services was more prevalent among young males and more frequent, heavier drinkers. (1) Underage youth may also order alcohol off the Internet and have it shipped to their home (although purchasing alcohol over the Internet may involve high shipping costs, a credit card and delayed delivery).
  
• Home delivery sales are unsupervised. Delivery persons may have less incentive to check purchasers' age identification when they are away from the licensed establishment and cannot be watched by a surveillance camera, the liquor store's management, or other customers. A home delivery ban would eliminate these types of unsupervised alcohol sales. Also, an age requirement for delivery persons may decrease sales to youth because an older person may be less likely to sell alcohol to underage people.
  
• An invoice system may discourage people age 21 or older from providing alcohol to teens. Buyers may be discouraged from providing alcohol to underage people when they cannot do so anonymously. Purchasers could also be required to sign a statement indicating that they are aware of the criminal and civil liability for injuries and damage that result from providing alcohol to an underage person. In the event that an underage youth injures him/herself or others as result of the delivered alcohol, the purchaser can be traced and prosecuted via the invoice system.
  

Considerations for passing this ordinance in your community

ISSUE: Alcohol establishments may oppose home deliveries laws because it would limit their business opportunities
RESPONSE: Because home delivery regulations may decrease alcohol sales to youth, regulating home deliveries may ultimately protect alcohol establishments from criminal and civil liability. Furthermore, the invoice system provides alcohol establishments with a mechanism for monitoring their employees when they are off the premises making a home delivery.

ISSUE: Community members may oppose policies that limit their alcohol purchase options.
RESPONSE: Numerous policies already exist that limit alcohol purchase options. In several states, for example, state law prohibits the sale of alcoholic beverages on Sundays and during certain hours of the other days of the week. Home delivery regulations are similar to these other regulations in their intent--to preserve the public health, safety, and overall welfare of community citizens. In addition, a national survey of adults showed that 60% of adults were in favor of policies that ban home delivery. (2)

ISSUE: Municipal governments may oppose home delivery regulations if they require additional resources to enforce.
RESPONSE: To offset the financial costs of enforcing home delivery regulations, a portion of the revenue from home delivery fines or alcohol licensing fees could be dedicated to enforcing home delivery regulations. In addition, alcohol license fees could be increased. To offset the personnel time required to review home delivery invoices, it may also be possible to give community volunteers the authority to review invoices.

Considerations for implementation

• If home delivery restrictions apply to only one particular community, people may order alcohol from establishments located in nearby communities that don't have such regulations. A state- or county-level policy regulating home deliveries would help eliminate this problem.
  

• Delivery personnel should be trained on how to check IDs and on other responsible service practices. Policies that regulate the home delivery of alcohol should be covered in a responsible beverage service training program. (see Responsible Beverage Service Training).
  
• Home delivery policies must be enforced. Regulations will be more successful if the process of monitoring and enforcing policies are monitored by police or other authorized personnel. For example, a local ordinance could require that authorized personnel conduct invoice checks two times per year. Police could also do "reverse stings" in which police cadets who are younger than age 21 order alcohol to be delivered to their homes and then identify the delivery people who do not comply with the regulations. This strategy may not work in small communities where people recognize each other. In these places, police officers may need to collaborate with cadets or officers from nearby cities.
  

How alcohol home delivery policies fit into a larger context

Policies on home delivery will be most effective if combined with other strategies, such as:

• Responsible beverage service training (see responsible beverage service training).
  
• Checking the age identification (see checking age identification).
  
• Warning posters indicating that alcohol servers and sellers check the age identification of all customers (see warning posters).
  
• Policies aimed at reducing non-commercial (social) sources of alcohol among youth such as keg registration and social liability laws (see beer keg registration and social host liability).
  

What other communities have done

In Madison, WI, in December, 2001, the City Council passed an ordinance that requires requests for any home delivery of alcohol (including beer kegs) to be made in person at the store. The purchaser must show two forms of ID at the store and be present at the delivery address to sign a receipt upon delivery (Madison City Ordinance 39.07). None of the liquor-store owners were opposed to the new regulations because they do not interfere with regular business operations. (3)

Additional resources
For sample ordinances to reduce the supply of alcohol to teens and young adults under age 21 see Appendix B of Alcohol Compliance Checks: A Procedures Manual for Enforcing Alcohol Age-of-Sale Laws . University of Minnesota, Alcohol Epidemiology Program, 2000.

References:

1. Fletcher LA, Toomey TL, Wagenaar AC, Short B, Willenbring ML. Alcohol home delivery services: A source of alcohol for underage drinkers. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 61(1):81-84, 2000.
   
2. Wagenaar AC, Harwood EM, Toomey TL, Denk CE, Zander KM. Public opinion on alcohol policies in the United States: Results from a national survey. Journal of Public Health Policy, 21(3):303-27, 2000.
   
3. Spaetti A. City Council passes keg ordinance. The Badger Herald. Madison, WI. December 04, 2001.
   

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