If laws and regulations are going to deter people and businesses from illegal behaviors, they must be accompanied by significant penalties, and they must be enforced, through surveillance, community policing, and arrests. Think about it—a lot more people would speed if speeding tickets cost only $5 or if police didn’t use radar guns. Instead, drivers who might otherwise speed are deterred by the possibility of being pulled over and receiving a big fine and insurance penalties. It is the application of penalties that makes the difference.

Enforcement and policy are closely connected, but there are important reasons to draw a distinction between them. We separate policy and enforcement for three reasons:

• First, policy alone does not imply enforcement. A policy on the books won’t have any impact unless it is enforced.
  
  
• Second, enforcement alone won’t work if the policy isn’t appropriate or isn’t accepted by the general population.
  
  
• Third, policy and enforcement are designed and implemented by two different systems. The legislative or organizational system makes policy, but the justice or law enforcement system enforces it. It is important to acknowledge these two separate systems and bring both parties to the table.

Enforcement strategies can be broken down into five major categories:

• The first is surveillance. This includes things like undercover “sting” operations designed to find out if people are complying with existing laws. Research shows that using compliance checks substantially increases the number of retailers who comply with minimum purchase age laws for alcohol and tobacco—if the checks are conducted regularly, randomly, and with publicity.¹

• The second category includes penalties and fines for people or institutions that don’t comply with an established policy. Examples include taking away the license of an intoxicated driver or fining a merchant for selling tobacco or alcohol to underage youth. Some communities also fine young people caught possessing alcohol or tobacco products.²

• The third type of enforcement is detention. For example, offenders go to jail for driving while intoxicated or for violating state or local laws governing the use of alcohol and other drugs.
  
  
• The fourth category is community policing. Citizens can play an instrumental role in making youth alcohol and drug use prevention a public health and safety priority. They can affect the way law enforcement, government agencies, and public officials implement and enforce public policy. They can also become allies with law enforcement, serving as a “first watch” for troubled areas. They can form neighborhood crime watches and make use of nuisance abatement programs to dislocate drug dealers and reduce the number and density of drug markets and underage drinking sites within a neighborhood.³

• Finally, incentives have also proven to be an excellent way to enforce prevention policies. Safe driver credits, for example, can reduce the cost of car insurance. Massachusetts has a very strong program of auto insurance incentives.

As prevention practitioners, there are many ways you can use enforcement to strengthen your prevention programs. For example:

• You can educate policymakers and law enforcement agencies about the proven effectiveness of enforcement.
  
  
• You can generate public understanding of—and support for—the need to enact and enforce youth drug and alcohol laws.
  
  
• You can collaborate with businesses, law enforcement, and the criminal justice system to ensure that youth alcohol, tobacco, and drug use are taken seriously and that the laws are understood and enforced.
  
  
• In addition, you can publicize the health risks and penal consequences associated with youth substance use.
  
  
• You can advocate for ongoing evaluation of the effectiveness of federal, state, local, and organizational policies.
  
  
• You can also implement community-level interventions, such as the undercover buying operations, neighborhood watches, and nuisance abatement programs described above.

The key to effective enforcement is visibility: People need to see that substance use prevention is a community priority and that violations of related laws and regulations will not be tolerated. One way to do this is through communications, our next topic of discussion.

You have completed Module 3.
Please proceed to Activity 3: Applying Enforcement Strategies.

References

1. Cummings, K. M. and Coogan, K. (1992). Organizing communities to prevent the sale of tobacco products to minors. International Quarterly of Community Health Education, 13, 77–86; Feighery, E., Altman, D., and Saffer, G. (1991). The effects of combining education and enforcement to reduce tobacco sales to minors: A study of four northern California communities. Journal of the American Medical Association, 266, 3168–3171; Jason, L. A., Ji, P. Y., Anes, M. D., and Birkhead, S. H. (1991). Active enforcement of cigarette control laws in the prevention of cigarette sales to minors. Journal of the American Medical Association, 266, 3159–3161; Preusser, D. F., Williams, A. F., and Weinstein, H. B. (1994). Policing underage alcohol sales. Journal of Safety Research, 25(3); 127–133; and Radecki, T. (1993). Compliance checks and other enforcement methods to deter underage drinking. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, Division of Knowledge Development and Evaluation.
   
   
2. Join Together (November 14, 2000). Mass. teens face fines for tobacco possession. Available online at www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/inthenews/2000/mass-teens-face-fine-for.html.
   
   
3. Davis, R. C., Smith, B. E., Lurigio, A. J., and Skogan, W. G. (1991). Community responses to crack: Grassroots antidrug programs. Report of the Victim Services Agency, New York, to the National Institute of Justice. New York: Victim Services Agency; Eck, J. and Wartell, J. (1998). Improving the management of rental properties with drug problems: A randomized experiment. In L. Green-Mazarolle & J. Roehl (Eds.), (1998). Civil remedies (pp. 161–185). New Brunswick, NJ: Criminal Justice Press; Green-Mazerolle, L., Roehl, J., and Kadleck, C. (1997). Controlling social disorder using civil remedies: Results from a randomized field experiment in Oakland, California. In L. Green-Mazerolle and J. Roehl (Eds.). (1998). Civil remedies. New Brunswick, NJ: Criminal Justice Press; Lurigio, A., Davis, R., Regulus, T., Gwisada, V., Popkin, S., Dantzker, M., Smith, B., and Ouellet, A. (1993). An evaluation of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office Narcotics Nuisance Abatement Program. Chicago: Loyola University, Department of Criminal Justice; Rosenbaum, D. P. and Lavrakas, P. J. (November, 1993). The impact of voluntary community organizations on communities: A test of the implant hypothesis. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Phoenix, Arizona; and Smith, B. E., Davis, R. C., Hillenbrand, S. W., and Goretsky, S. R. (1992). Ridding neighborhoods of drug houses in the private sector. Washington, DC: American Bar Association.