More hours means more harm to our community

Please read and TAKE ACTION to stop Leno’s 4am Bar Bill

Senator Mark Leno has introduced SB 635 to extend drinking hours in California from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m.

California already suffers $38.4 billion in alcohol-related harm every year, with 10,000 lives lost and hundreds of thousands of additional injuries. Two more hours of alcohol-driven profit for bar and restaurant owners will produce even more harm and loss.

In a report prepared for the California Council on Alcohol Policy by the Community Prevention Planning Program at UC Berkeley in 2004-2005, these points were highlighted:

• Extended hours for alcohol outlets are likely to increase amount of alcohol consumed and to increase alcohol-related problems including (emphasis ours)
  • violence
  • public drunkenness
  • drinking-driving arrests and crashes
  • youth access to alcohol
• Police costs and other community service costs will be greater under this proposal, such as
  • police services
  • emergency medical services
  • planning and zoning
  • streets and sanitation
  • California Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) services.

Please encourage your community to make your voices be heard!

Alcohol Justice’s Grassroots Action Center offers easy steps to write and submit a letter to Senator Leno on their website. Please consider submitting a letter and taking a stand!

[Sources: “Extended Hours of Sale” prepared by Friedner D. Wittman, Ph.D., Prevention by Design, Community Prevention Planning Program, Institute for the Study of Social Change, University of California, Berkeley ; Alcohol Justice]