Behavioral Health to Offer Training on Avoiding Selling Alcohol to Minors

Behavioral Health Services of Pickens County offers trainings this year that could help employers and their employees avoid costly fines and even jail time.

The Merchant and Responsible Beverage Service Training will be offered in February and August of this year.

Cathy Breazeale, Director of Prevention Services at BHSPC, says the training is very similar to a program often offered by Behavioral Health.

The Palmetto Retailers Education Program, or PREP, is a short course that helps reduce underage access to alcohol and tobacco products, while also lowering liability risks for businesses and their employees.

The Merchant Training will focus on those who sell or serve alcohol

“We send out invitations to all merchants that have vendors and servers that serve these things, that have these licenses,” Breazeale said. “It's a free training on the front end versus a costly one if they get caught doing some things.”

PREP training aims at educating participants on their legal responsibility to not serve alcohol or tobacco to underage youth, helping them to understand key state laws about selling alcohol and tobacco products in South Carolina and the correct procedures for checking ID cards, learning how to refuse service to both underage youth and intoxicated customers.

The training helps owners, managers and servers/sellers comply to alcohol and tobacco laws/policies at all levels of government, and to avoid the consequences that failure to comply with those laws may bring.

Those consequences can include fines of $675 and 30 days in jail for selling alcohol to a minor, $475 in fines for selling tobacco to someone under the age of 18.

If you sell alcohol improperly to someone and that customer is injured, you can also be vulnerable to lawsuits.

PREP training covers off-premise and on-premise alcohol sales practices, tobacco sales practices, developing policies for managers and sellers to follow, keg registration and MethWatch.

Anyone who serves or sells alcohol or tobacco products should attend PREP training, including:

Hotel/motel managers

Food and beverage managers

Restaurant and bar owners and managers

Liquor store owners and managers

Convenience store owners, managers and employees

Grocery story owners, managers and employees

Law enforcement officers

Alcoholic beverage servers

Special events coordinators

Undergoing PREP training can also provide businesses with lowered rates for alcohol liability insurance and a reason to ask for lower alcohol license administrative fines.

Check back with Easley Patch and Behavioral Health Services of Pickens County for The Merchant and Responsible Beverage Service Training dates as they are announced.

Trainings may be held on Sunday to allow a larger number of restaurant owners and employees to attend.

Call BHSPC at 898-5800 to find out about the availability of PREP training.

The PREP trainings are just part of an effort by Behavioral Health Services and its Stepping It Up Coalition to tackle the problem of drugs in our area.

The coalition has been awarded a $625,000 five-year Drug-Free Communities grant.

The grant will provide resources for the Pickens County Steppin’ It Up Coalition to build upon previous successes by broadening prevention messages and activities to explicitly include marijuana and prescription drugs.

The coalition has been meeting regularly to discuss how to best use the grant money to achieve its goals.