Steve Hardy
Director

Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control
For more information about ABC and its programs, go to www.abc.ca.gov.

Responsibilities and accomplishments include:

Increasing compliance through enforcement of alcohol laws*:

• Distributed more than $17 million in grants since 1995 to 235 local law enforcement agencies to help prevent underage drinking and enforce alcohol laws.
• Also distributed $9 million since 2002 to provide training for law enforcement agencies, state universities and community organizations to address underage drinking.
• Increased law enforcement produced 300 more alcohol-related arrests resulting in a 4 percent reduction in sales to minors in 2004-05 compared to 2003-04.
• Continued to make about 2,300 arrests/citations each year and another 1,100 arrests/citations in joint investigations with local law enforcement agencies.
• Also continued to file about 2,220 disciplinary accusations against licensees each year, resulting in $2.3 million in fines deposited into the state General Fund.
• Partnered with state public safety operations to reduce holiday season deaths from traffic accidents by 26 percent in fiscal year 2004-05.

*More than 1,400 California motorists were killed in alcohol-related crashes in 2004 - of which 680 (nearly half) were under the age of 21.

Educating businesses on alcohol license laws:

• Trained more than 19,000 liquor-industry employees in about 640 training sessions in 2005 - representing a 29 percent increase in the number of people trained and a 21 percent increase in the number of sessions offered.

Streamlining the alcohol license application process:

• Reduced license application backlog by 900 during the past year.
• Implemented "fast-track" programming to reduce wait times for license application appointments to five days or less.