The Portland Press Herald / The Maine Sunday Telegram

March 4

Portland picked the right way to limit Old Port rowdiness

— As a regional coalition committed to preventing underage drinking, we at 21 Reasons disagree with your recent editorial, (''Naked Shakespeare vote misses the mark,'' Oct. 21) and applaud the city of Portland for employing its land-use ordinance to disperse alcohol establishments with entertainment licenses.

This is an appropriate and effective tool to help policy makers guide how we want our city to grow. At 21 Reasons we support a multi-strategy approach to solving the problems of the Old Port and other dense areas; alcohol compliance checks, training for alcohol servers, limits on low-price promotions, operating-under-the-influence road blocks and careful review of liquor license renewal applications are all important pieces.

But these strategies do nothing to address the over crowding issue. The simple fact is that liquor establishments with entertainment licenses tend to draw larger crowds. Research has shown that alcohol outlet density is tied to increased rates of high-risk and binge drinking; it is also associated with crime, violence, motor vehicle crashes, sexually transmitted diseases, intimate partner violence and other problems.

A late night in the Old Port will confirm these findings. Requiring some space between venues is a way to ensure that the dangerous over crowding in the Old Port won't happen in other places in the city.

The ordinance helps fan out alcohol outlets and, over time, creates a mixed-use economic base.

Just as we have setbacks for industrial uses of land to protect us from the harmful runoff of industrial by-products, the 100-foot bar dispersal ordinance protects us from the harmful by-products of densely concentrated intoxicated patrons at closing time.

This is a multifaceted issue that has evolved over decades. We need a multi-disciplined approach to address it.