Buford's Alcohol Compliance Rate is at 89%!

The Gwinnett County Police Department detectives visited ­­­19 alcohol retailers in the unincorporated area of Buford between January 1 and March 31, 2016. Only two (2) out of the 19 stores sold alcohol to the underage decoy.

Preventing teens from drinking is the key to preventing many social issues accompanying underage drinking. According to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD), adolescents who begin drinking before age 15 are five times more likely to become dependent on alcohol later in life than those who wait until after they are 21 years old. Adolescence, then, is a pivotal time period when we need to do our best to protect teens and young adults from retail availability of alcohol. The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking notifies governments and policymakers that education alone is not enough to prevent teen access to alcohol. When attempting to reduce and prevent underage drinking, it is imperative that there are restrictions in place that help reduce the availability of alcohol on an environmental level. Evidence based environmental strategies, such as conducting regular compliance checks of alcohol retailers, are effective in restricting the retail availability of alcohol to teens in the community.

In order to expand this effort even further, we support the alcohol retailers in the community and supply them with information they can use in their training of employees, such as the Alcohol Retailer Knowledge Base brochure shown in the picture above. This helps assure that employees are following all the laws and ordinances, such as checking IDs, and not selling alcohol to those under 21.

We would like to thank the following retailers for their efforts to prevent underage drinking and continued commitment to checking IDs of those who purchased alcohol during the months of January-March 2016.

Highway 124 Food Mart, 3595 Braselton Hwy, Buford

Dacula Food and Gas, 1955 Gravel Springs Rd, Buford

Hamilton Mill Chevron, 2800 Hamilton Mill Rd, Buford

Kroger #494, 3300 Hamilton Mill Rd, Buford

Rite Aid #11812, 3330 Hamilton Mill Rd, Buford

Shell Food Mart, 2525 Hamilton Mill Rd, Buford

Venus Wine, 2725 Hamilton Mill Rd, Buford

Walgreens #07958, 2630 Braselton Hwy, Buford

Shell Food Mart, 2625 Mall of GA Blvd, Buford

Each of these stores checked for ID and refused to sell alcohol to an underage decoy. We appreciate your important role in reducing teen access to alcohol and making Buford a safer and healthier community.

Gwinnett United In Drug Education, Inc. (GUIDE) and the Gwinnett Coalition for Health and Human Services collaborate with the Gwinnett County Police Department in these prevention activities because we care about young people in our community and want to keep them safe and healthy.

GUIDE is a substance abuse prevention agency serving Gwinnett County since 1986. To find out more about us, please connect with us at guideinc.org.