Johns Hopkins Gazette: February 6, 1995

Corner Liquor Stores May Set Stage for Drug Trade


By Mike Field

     Insights can come at the strangest times.
     Driving home one night to his family in suburban Pikesville,
Thomas LaVeist noticed that in one inner city neighborhood known
for its  poverty and crime, he had passed no fewer than three
separate liquor stores all in the space of about a city block. He
was stopped at a traffic light thinking about this unusual
concentration of liquor-to-go when, directly in front of his car,
he watched a drug transaction take place.
     "It got me to thinking about the infrastructure of chaotic
communities," said Dr. LaVeist, an assistant professor of health
policy and management in the School of Public Health. "We are
used to referring to the infrastructure necessary for a
well-functioning community. Things like a police force that
responds to crime, good schools, well-maintained roads and so
forth. As I thought about it, I began wondering if there was a
necessary infrastructure for chaotic communities as well."
     Dr. LaVeist's curiosity soon led him to take a closer look
at the way drugs and alcohol are sold in Baltimore's poorest
neighborhoods. "I have a friend who is a minister in West
Baltimore, and he had told me in the past that he had a list of
all the liquor licenses in the city," Dr. LaVeist recalled. "It
occurred to me that there may be a correlation between liquor
sales, ethnicity, social status and crime."
     Using the list of the city's 1,356 liquor licenses and an
IBM personal computer, Dr. LaVeist set about trying to find
connections between the way liquor was sold and the kinds of
neighborhoods in which it is sold. Because his project has been
and remains unfunded, most of his efforts have gone into working
evenings, weekends, whenever he can find the time. And although
Dr. LaVeist is quick to insist it is still too early to draw any
specific conclusions, his work has nonetheless suggested that
certain kinds of liquor sales may contribute to the
infrastructure inherent in chaotic communities.
     "A key issue is not the sale of liquor so much as it is the
way in which the liquor is sold," Dr. LaVeist said. "I'm not
trying to re-establish temperance here. We've proven that
prohibition won't work." 
     To illustrate his point, Dr. LaVeist takes two unopened
bottles of beer from the bookshelf near his desk. The first
bottle is the familiar 12-ounce bottle of beer, in this case a
long neck of Miller. The second bottle is more of a jug, really,
a giant 64-ounce bottle of malt liquor conveniently contoured for
easy handling.
     "These bottles represent the two primary ways in which
alcohol is sold in Baltimore's poor communities," Dr. LaVeist
said. "Essentially they fall into two categories: taverns and
what I call corner stores. A tavern is where you go to buy a
bottle of beer. A corner store is the sort of operation where you
pay through a turnstile for a very limited selection of cheap
wine, malt liquor and beer."
     Using a mapping program on his computer, Dr. LaVeist began
to look at the kind of liquor license each premise held and
compare it with the predominant ethnicity and social status of
the neighborhood where it was located.
     "What you find is that in the more affluent neighborhoods--
both black and white--there are hardly any liquor licenses, and
those that are there are almost exclusively associated with
restaurants, hotels or private clubs," Dr. LaVeist said.
"Furthermore, you find the more African Americans in an area, the
fewer total liquor licenses there are, largely because there are
few restaurants or hotels serving liquor within poor black
neighborhoods."
     But it was the remaining licenses and their distribution
that really struck Dr. LaVeist. "Overwhelmingly, you find taverns
in poor white neighborhoods and corner stores in poor black
ones," he said. "Probably some of this is a deep-seated cultural
difference. In the low income Greek or Polish neighborhoods, a
corner tavern was a feature of life, just as it was back in the
old country."
     It is the different functions these liquor outlets play
within their communities that Dr. LaVeist is now investigating.
"Taverns have a certain function and can arguably be said to
build a sense of community," he said. "Patrons are drinking in a
social environment where the bartender is legally sanctioned to
prevent over-indulgence. Furthermore, when you buy beer by the
bottle or by the mug it is more expensive, which serves as
another check against having too much to drink."
     Corner stores, by contrast, have no such social pact with
the neighborhood. "The rules governing this kind of license
require that the alcohol not be consumed on premises," Dr.
LaVeist said. "In fact, you must be at least 100 feet away from
the building before opening the bottle. Now what does this mean,
practically speaking? It means you establish a sanctified pattern
of people standing out on the street consuming liquor, a form of
quasi-legal loitering. Furthermore, since these stores are
selling the most alcohol for the least money, you have
individuals drinking an entire 64-ounce bottle of malt liquor,
which has a much higher alcohol content than ordinary beer.
     "Look at how this bottle is ergonomically designed for ease
of handling," he says, picking up the 64-ounce bottle of malt
liquor. "I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to be around
anyone who had consumed all this."
     The presence of these corner stores in Baltimore's poorest
communities may be contributing to some of the social
path-ologies they are experiencing, Dr. LaVeist believes. "What
do you need as an infrastructure for open air drug markets?" he
asks. "Well you need a pay phone, a route to escape and a reason
to be standing around."
     Baltimore's infamous system of back alleys makes it easy to
disappear quickly, and pay phones tend to be common in poorer
neighborhoods, where many residents are without phone service. It
is the corner stores, which promote patterns of loitering, that
may be contributing the final missing piece of the puzzle.
     "One thing I believe may be happening is that the location
of the corner stores may be helping to support the infrastructure
of the drug trade," Dr. LaVeist said. "It is too early in this
study to say with any certainty, but I would not be surprised if
we find a correlation there." 
     Having plotted liquor licenses by type and location, Dr.
LaVeist intends next to start matching crime statistics--
particularly open air drug arrests--with the existing data. If,
as he suspects, a strong correlation exists, then in the future
community organizations and political leaders may want to pay
more attention to the kinds of liquor licenses granted within
specific communities.
     "What I'm really trying to do is identify the infrastructure
that sustains chaotic communities," Dr. LaVeist said. "If we can
identify some of these components then maybe we can begin to
dismantle them. That's really what this research is all about."


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