Mandatory Responsible Beverage Service Training associated with higher refusals of service to apparently intoxicated patrons

Serving alcoholic beverages to obviously intoxicated patrons increases the risk of problems like impaired driving and violence. To address this, the Responsible Beverage Service (RBS) training aims to equip alcohol servers with the skills to recognize intoxication and refuse service. While many U.S. states have laws against serving intoxicated individuals, compliance is often low. California’s RBS Training Act, implemented in 2022, provides a unique opportunity to assess the impact of mandated training on server behaviour and compliance with alcohol service laws. The current study examined the effectiveness of California’s RBS Training Act, which aimed to improve the refusal rates of alcohol service to obviously intoxicated patrons. The findings indicated that after implementing the training, the refusal rate increased significantly from 19.6% to 39.2% over two years. This suggests that the training was effective in encouraging servers to refuse service to intoxicated individuals. However, despite this improvement, over half of the intoxicated patrons were still served, indicating that more comprehensive strategies may be needed. The authors highlighted the importance of community-level interventions that combine training with enforcement to enhance compliance with alcohol serving laws. They also noted the need for further research to better understand the effects of such training and to evaluate multi-component interventions for maximum impact.