The state’s new keg registration law is now six months old, and it’s had some impact that was not expected. Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division administrator, Lynn Walding, says the law requires retailers who sell kegs are required to buy a booklet with 25 registration stickers.
Walding says they’ve sold over 3,300 keg registrations booklets. He says only 673 establishments out of almost eight thousand with liquor licenses have purchased the stickers to sell kegs, which Walding says indicates some places have chosen not to deal with the change. Walding says the number of kegs sold haven’t dropped.
Walding says they think several people who used to sell one or two kegs a month have dropped selling kegs because of the registration requirements. He says it hasn’t necessarily deterred kegs sales, it has just shifted the business to those who have purchased the registration books. The registration numbers are put on the division’s website, so police can track the person who bought the keg.
Walding says there have been a couple of cases where police were able to track the kegs and people were cited for buying kegs for minors, and a couple of cases where people were cited for defacing the stickers. Overall, he says the law appears to be deterring people from buying kegs for underage kids. Walding says there’s no way to determine the full impact of the change.
Walding says as the bill was being debated there were allegations that young people would find beer in other ways, or go to stronger liquor, but he says there’s no way to really determine if that has happened. He says they hope the law hasn’t pushed kids over to other forms of alcohol as the intent of the law was to deter adults from buying beer kegs for minors. The state charges retailers five dollars for the booklet of 25 keg registration stickers.