Responsible retail standards protect our youth

Hesperia Star

By Isela Aguilera, Mikel De Leon, Edmund Palafox and Yriel Tuazon / Contributed Content

August 26, 2017

HESPERIA, CA – In late June and early July, we partnered with the High Desert Community Coalition to conduct pseudo minor decoy operations. We visited a total of 46 stores in Hesperia and Victorville. We are all in our early 20s, but all of us look younger than our true ages. The purpose was to determine whether clerks at liquor stores are properly checking identification before agreeing to sell alcohol.

It was a very eye-opening experience. In Hesperia, nearly one in four of the stores we visited did not check for identification and, even worse, in Victorville nearly half didn’t check.

Clerks who sell alcohol without checking identification probably don’t even think about how it’s illegal, or more importantly, how risky it is to the underage youth who are buying from them. Teenagers are daredevils and we have no doubt that word gets around as to which stores don’t check for identification. We definitely think these stores add to the number of teens who are able to get alcohol in our community.

Some of the clerks didn’t seem to know how to make sure an identification card isn’t expired or fake. They need to learn because alcohol could destroy a young person’s future. We really thought we were going to be carded more often than we were.

This was an important project for us because we have learned in school how chronic alcohol use affects the brain. There is a physical and a mental impact. Teens in particular are doing irreparable harm to their bodies when they drink. It’s been a short enough time since we were teens that we know many of these young people tend to over-consume once they start drinking, and there is a very real risk of them getting alcohol poisoning. From what we’ve seen, there are some 15-year-olds who think they could out-drink an adult. Binge drinking is on the rise, and dangerous.

We left this experience especially concerned about Victorville because so many clerks did not check our identification at the stores there. Our results have been shared with the sheriff’s stations in both cities and we hope some action is taken so that young people can’t access alcohol at these stores so easily. One of the clerks even asked, “Are you 18?” The volunteer said yes, even though she is actually over 21, and the clerk still agreed to sell alcohol to her without checking her identification.

We also noticed a few other issues we thought were worth mentioning. In areas where the liquor stores were close together, we documented more problems than in areas where they were farther apart. There were people loitering and panhandling at a lot of these stores. The stores that didn’t check for identification generally were the ones that were dirty and they kept mini bottles out in the open rather than locking them in a case. However, there were few of the more professional looking stores that didn’t check identification either, so we would like to see all the retailers in these cities be better trained, held accountable and responsible.

Want to become more involved in keeping your community safe and healthy? The High Desert Community Coalition meets the third Wednesday of each month. For more information, call 442- 229-4912 or e-mail HDCommunityCoalition@gmail.com.

Isela Aguilera, Mikel De Leon, Edmund Palafox and Yriel Tuazon are High Desert Community Coalition student volunteers who recently completed pesudo minor decoy operations.