
Asking drivers who are stopped for impaired driving where they were last served alcohol is a law enforcement strategy used in some Minnesota communities as a potential way to reduce overservice—that is, selling alcohol to obviously intoxicated patrons. The data collected as part of a “place of last drink” (POLD) strategy can help identify bars and restaurants with a pattern of overservice.
Given that U of M research has shown alcohol overservice is common, and other research has found that half of individuals stopped for alcohol-impaired driving report that their most recent drink came from a bar or restaurant, POLD has the potential to reduce impaired driving.
U of M researchers evaluated a Minnesota POLD initiative that started in 2014; as of 2023, 32 agencies were participating. As part of that evaluation, a study led by senior research fellow Kathleen Lenk with the School of Public Health examined the relationship between participation in the POLD initiative and the number of alcohol-related traffic crashes. The researchers gathered data from 2010 to 2019 from 89 communities across Minnesota (30 participated in POLD, the rest did not). The study found that overall, there was little difference in the number of alcohol-related crashes between communities that participated in POLD and those that did not.
Weak implementation of POLD might be a major contributing factor. In another study from March 2024, School of Public Health researchers evaluated the 26 law enforcement agencies that served the 30 communities participating in the Minnesota POLD initiative and ranked whether the agencies had “high” or “low” implementation. The researchers ranked four different criteria: program start-up, data collection, stakeholder awareness, and follow-up practices.
Only 9 of the 26 agencies reported high implementation overall—and of them, only 3 noted high implementation across all four criteria. Stakeholder awareness tended to score particularly low, which the research report notes “might create a missed opportunity to inform establishments that there may be consequences for overservice.” Penalties—such as mandatory training, fines, or license suspensions—were rarely used. Instead, police tended to take a “cooperative” approach and trust alcohol establishments to voluntarily fix overservice problems on their own terms. This may help explain why the researchers found no effects of the Minnesota POLD initiative on traffic crashes.
Testimonies from alcohol servers noted similar trends. As part of a February 2024 project, researchers interviewed 44 servers from 24 communities—some communities that had participated in POLD and some that had not—across the state. Alcohol servers who had worked in communities participating in POLD were not significantly more aware of POLD than servers who worked in non-POLD communities, and servers across the board reported that overserving generally brought no consequences. The servers said that even if police did respond to overservice, penalties rarely followed.
However, the servers from POLD communities did report that they received more support from their managers when refusing alcohol to intoxicated patrons—suggesting managers may know about POLD, even if the servers don’t. This also supports the idea that stakeholder awareness and perceived consequences have an effect on serving practices.
Servers generally expressed that clearer policies, better training, and more tangible consequences for both management and servers would make it easier to prevent overservice.
Ultimately, whether POLD is an effective strategy for preventing overservice is inconclusive. Research suggests its effectiveness hinges on whether it is set up, communicated, and enforced properly.
“Very few public health strategies are sufficient by themselves to create significant decreases in complex public health problems,” Lenk notes. “Rather, multiple strategies typically need to be combined to reduce problems.”
The research studies were supported by funding from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
For agencies interested in implementing POLD, the U of M Alcohol Epidemiology Program features a resource page with POLD best practices, training materials, and case studies.
—Sophia Koch, contributing writer