Alcohol Laws

We posted a “This is Public Health” sticker on the front door of a liquor store where it states that they ID for the purchase of any alcoholic beverage. This sign is of course referring to the law where you must be 21 to purchase alcohol in the State of Florida. The liquor store we chose was Bulls discount beverage and it is located one street over from the USF campus. This location makes purchasing alcohol extremely easy and accessible to students that are under 21. Many college students have their first alcoholic drink when they attend college and a lot of them are under 21 when this occurs. This is a public health issue because when a person becomes intoxicated, they start to make poor decisions that not only affect them selves but also everyone around them. For example, if an intoxicated person tries to drive, they are putting everyone else on the road at risk because they lose their coordination skills. To reduce the number of accidents due to drinking, public health influenced the government to set standards to protect individuals they feel cannot make responsible decisions on their own. They decided that individuals under 21 were not yet responsible enough to handle any type of alcohol. This standard was set during the 1980s (though was built up before then) to attempt to prevent alcohol related accidents to either the under 21 drinker or people around them. Even though there are laws against underage drinking, the issue of alcohol consumption still remains important in public health because people are still being killed in accidents due to alcohol.



Geena Festa, Diana Caicedo, Mary Ivory