May 23, 2012

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Lottery games now featured on two state liquor trucks

February 3, 2012 By

Lottery C.E.O. Terry Rich and A.B.D. administrator Stephen Larson (L-R) in front of truck touting the veterans lottery ticket.

The state agency that handles liquor sales has teamed up with the Iowa Lottery to create a couple of rolling lottery advertisements.

The Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division (ABD) has used space on the sides of its delivery trucks for several years to promote tourism through the “Iowa Great Places” program.

A.B.D. spokesperson, Tonya Dusold, says this expands that program to another area. “This is the first time we’ve partnered with another state agency beyond the Great Places program,” Dusold says.

 The Iowa Lottery has two trucks in the program, one promotes the veterans tickets that raise funds for the Iowa Veterans Trust Fund, and the other truck promotes the “It’s Your Dream Anything Can Happen” game.

Dusold says the trucks travel some 800 to 1,000 miles each week, delivering the alcohol purchased by retailers across the state. She says the trucks are a good way to spread the word about the lottery products.

“The spirit of state government right now is what can we do to help each other out and use the least amount of resources and not do double duty. And so the idea of this came kind of between our administrator Stephen Larson and the Lottery C.E.O. Terry Rich on how we can partner and get their message out for very little to no cost to either agency,” Dusold says.

Dusold says the Iowa Lottery paid for the advertising wraps that go on the trucks. She says those wraps can cost between $2,000 and $5,000. Dusold says it made sense to fill in the blank sides of the trucks as they were already out on the road and the sides were blank.

ABD truck featuring Decorah.

She says A.B.D. is reaching out to other agencies who might be able to take advantage of the rolling advertising on their trucks.

The latest truck in the Great Places program just hit the road and features the city of Decorah. Dusold says there are now 13 semi trailers that feature Iowa Great Places on their sides.

There are plans in the works to add Appanoose County, Council Bluffs and Perry images on the A.B.D. trucks in the coming months. Dusold says it’s estimated trucks provide $60,000 in advertising each year to the Iowa Great Places areas featured on their sides.

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Supreme Court says evidence okay in Grinnell man’s vehicular homicide case

January 6, 2012 By

The Iowa Supreme Court has turned down a Grinnell man’s request to suppress evidence in his homicide case. Lee Allen Breuer was driving a car that rolled over on Highway 6 east of Newton in Jasper County in November of 2008.

When a deputy arrived he noticed an odor of alcohol. Breuer was taken to the hospital, as was a passenger in the car who later died. Breuer refused a breath test and also refused to give a blood or urine sample to a deputy. Another deputy went to a magistrate, secured a warrant for a blood sample, and then called the deputy at the hospital and told him he was on the way.

The deputy at the hospital told Breuer of the warrant and informed him a blood sample would be taken by force if he did not cooperate. He gave the sample and the warrant arrived at the hospital about 10 minutes later. The blood test found Breuer was over the legal alcohol limit, and Breuer was charged with homicide by vehicle.

He sought to have the sample suppressed as evidence, saying the warrant was not present when the blood sample was taken. The Iowa Supreme Court ruled that not having the search warrant physically present when the blood was drawn did not violate Breuer’s constitutional rights, and the blood sample can be used as evidence in his case.

See the ruling here: Breuer PDF

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Valley Junction now featured on IABD truck

December 23, 2011 By

Valley Junction IABD truck.

The Valley Junction area of Des Moines is the latest community to be featured on the side of trucks from the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division (IABD).

Division spokesperson, Tonya Dusold says the truck becomes a rolling billboard, displaying some of the best things about the area.

“Valley Junction has a lot of shopping, one of kind stores, they have lot of festivals, holiday activities and things like that.

The truck basically features snapshots of a number of these events that happen throughout the year as well as some of the stores that are there year round,” Dusold says.

A city or area has to be named to the “Iowa Great Places” list to be featured on the trucks, which then carry the info all over the state.

“They spend thousands of hours and thousand of miles one the each year delivering spirits to 950 licensees throughout the state,” Dusold said.

Each place is allowed to use a local designer to help create the information that is placed on the side of the trucks. The IABD pays for the advertising graphics that go on the truck in a partnership with the Department of Cultural Affairs. Some of the special trucks have been sporting their graphics for over five years.

“They last anywhere from five to seven years, we have a few that have been on for six years or so and they’re still doing pretty good,” according to Dusold. The Valley Junction truck brings the total to 12 that’re showing off the best places to visit in Iowa.

Four others will be released in the coming months. Find out more information about Iowa Great Places at: www.IowaGreatPlaces.gov.

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Leaders in Iowa City look at changes to under 21 ordinance

November 22, 2011 By

City council members in Iowa City held a work session Monday where they discussed some changes to the new ordinance that’s supposed to be keeping anyone under the age of 21 out of bars after ten at night. The recommendations come from some downtown bar owners and an alcohol safety group that includes the University of Iowa.

The owner of the bar “Bo James,” Leah Cohen told the council that a few bars have found ways to get around the ordinance. Cohen says the situation has reversed back to the way it was two years ago before the under 21 ordinance. She says “PAULA’s” (posession of alcohol under the legal age), ambulance calls and hospital visits have started to climb back up.

The ordinance has an exemption for businesses that show over 50% of their sales are not alchohol. Councilwoman Susan Mims said she is leery of making the restrictions to tough for restaurants. “There are some legitimate restaurants that we are hurting,” Mims says.

The council is looking at putting stricter limits on the number of PAULA violations a business can have, and tightening the exemptions for bars that serve food.

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Hornick man found guilty of supplying alcohol to minor in fatal crash

November 4, 2011 By

A jury in northwest Iowa Thursday found a man guilty of supplying alcohol to a teenager who was killed in a traffic accident. Twenty-six-year-old Robin Armfield of Hornick was originally charged with supplying alcohol to minor resulting in death, a class D felony.

A Woodbury County jury instead found him guilty of a lesser charge – the serious misdemeanor offense of supplying alcohol to a minor. A sentencing date has not been set, but Armfield faces up to one year in jail.

He was charged in connection with a February 21 crash that killed 17-year-old Mary Katherine Hughes of Salix. Authorities said Hughes drove her car south in the northbound lanes of Interstate 29 and collided head-on with a truck. The driver of the pickup, 23-year-old Ryan Marx of Sioux City, was not seriously injured.

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Alcoholic Beverages Commission says no to “Adult Chocolate Milk”

October 28, 2011 By

While chocolate milk is now being promoted as a way for people to refuel after a workout, the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Commission has turned downed a chocolate milk drink aimed at those who want a buzz.

Radio Iowa’s Dar Danielson reports: Chocolate milk :48

The commission has voted against adding a drink called “Adult Chocolate Milk” to the products that are sold by the state-controlled liquor business.

Commission chair, Greg Nashleanas says there are some similar type of products already being sold as drink mixes, but this comes ready to drink in a milk bottle. He says the original marketing said you could “go back to your childhood” when you drank the product, and thought he company said it had changed the marketing, he says they have a safety responsibility when looking at products, and this had some red flags.

Nashelenas says the drink is 40-proof , containing 15% alcohol, and the way it is presented could cause problems. Nashleanas says a young child could mistakenly drink the product thinking it was regular chocolate milk. The decision by the commission came after the manufacturer appealed the decision of Alcoholic Beverages Division staff and the commissioner that the product should not be sold.

Nashleanas says the three-level appeal process was created when Stephen Larson took over as the head of A.B.D., and it’s the first appeal the commission has heard. Nashleanas says it shows that they have a serious responsibility that the sale of alcohol is done in good faith and with good decisions.

A.B.D. spokesperson, Tonya Dusold, says they have over 1,400 products they sell and they are constantly reviewing new requests. Dusold says the number of new products varies month-to-month as they don’t usually review new products. They don’t usually review new products in October, November and December, but in the other months they can have from five to 35 new products in a month.

Some of the “new” products are just variations of the ones already being sold. She says the new products could be a new size of something like Black Velvet, and she says they don’t have listing meetings on those, they are usually presented as an extension of a product and a decision is made on them.

The chocolate milk with alcohol in it is sold in some other states, but Dusold says it is not sold in a majority of states the control the sale of alcohol products like the Iowa system.

Photo courtesy Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division.

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Waterloo creates tougher regulations for liquor stores

October 20, 2011 By

City leaders in Waterloo are imposing tougher regulations on convenience and liquor stores after a growing number of police calls to such establishments. Waterloo City Council member Quentin Hart helped draft an ordinance to address problems with loitering, fights and open alcohol containers outside the liquor stores.

“The goal is not to stifle business. We want to help our businesses in certain areas be a little more accountable to maintaining their premises,” Hart said. The push to restrict the growing number of liquor stores in Waterloo started several years ago when the council voted to keep the businesses several hundred feet away from protect public areas such as churches, day cares, parks, schools and homes. City Planner Arik Schroeder says those changes didn’t quite work.

“It wasn’t quite doing everything we thought it would do, so we’re tweaking the language a little more, making it a little more restrictive,” Schroeder said. Shops or convenience stores selling alcohol need at least half their sales to be in something other than liquor in order to locate near a protected public area.

This also includes an establishment exceeding 25% in hard liquor sales. Starting next month, cigarettes, lottery tickets and gas will not be considered a “non-alcohol” sale. If a shop can’t meet those requirements, it can’t move within 600 feet of a protected public area.

“I think it’s really going to help clean up the image of the community and prevent the proliferation of alcohol sales,” Schroeder said. City officials say liquor stores were able to hide under the title of a convenience store under the old ordinance. The new changes, Hart says, will keep business owners honest about their alcohol sales.

A separate ordinance also requires shops to employ “reasonable methods” to prevent loitering, littering and other violations from happening in the areas around their premises. A store with too many police visits or violations could be closed down.

By Jillian Petrus, KCRG-TV, Cedar Rapids

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