Enrollment is open for the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority’s (ABC) Youth Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention Project (YADAPP).

YADAPP is a unique peer leadership opportunity fostering healthy communities and the prevention of substance use. The annual program begins with a kick-off conference July 22-26 at Christopher Newport University in Newport News. Participation requires the registration of a team including four high school student participants and one adult sponsor.

During the conference, students attend topical workshops facilitated by peer leaders, hear from well-known motivational speakers, learn peer leadership and prevention best practices and develop Strategies To Act Now (STAN) plans to address substance use among their peers. Teams compete for $250 mini grants to use as seed money for their STAN plan and the $500 Wheeler Award to sustain their continued prevention efforts.

Enrollment is open through June 1. A $600 per-team fee includes conference materials, lodging and meals, as well as year-long coaching and support for adult sponsors as they aid their team in implementing its STAN plan throughout the school year.

Adult sponsors participate in their own track throughout the opening conference. They receive resources and training on topics that will help them support their team. Adult sponsors are eligible for continuing education units and professional development hours. Law enforcement officers are eligible for partial in-service credits through the Department of Criminal Justice Services.

In addition to working on their prevention plans, students can expand their experience as peer leaders by applying for YADAPP youth staff positions and progressing through four levels of leadership with increasing responsibilities. These levels start with the youth leader role acting as a guide for conference participants and build to the top level of serving as conference interns. YADAPP interns are young adults who spend 10 months planning aspects of the program including curriculum development and youth staff training.

“Peer-led substance use prevention is a proven-effective path for young leaders to take a stand to create positive change and promote healthy behaviors among youth in the commonwealth,” explained Katie Crumble, Virginia ABC director of Community Health and Engagement. 

Since its inception in 1984, approximately 450 different high schools and community organizations and more than 12,000 students have participated in YADAPP. For more information and to enroll, visit the YADAPP website.

Published:  The Roanoke Times
April 7, 2024

The 1980s called. They want their alcohol policy back.
Dan Casey’s opinion piece [“Legal cocktails-to-go: Freedom or just dumb?” March 26] ignores the most recent research on alcohol laws and regulations completely. This is especially true when it comes to Virginia alcohol law, and more importantly, the recently adopted cocktails to-go law. The R Street Institute, where I work, is one of the only nonpartisan think tanks in the country that analyzes alcohol laws and regulations. I am confident that our work is more current and relevant than the sources Dan Casey cites.
The piece points out the many states — 26 states and the District of Columbia — that have made cocktails to-go permanent. That is where most of the facts related to this issue ends, and the conjecture begins. Mr. Casey points out that Maryland is notably absent from the list of states that have made cocktails to-go permanent because the state allowed its pandemic era law to expire because of “drive-thru bars” in a 1980s rural county.
The only facts he references are from a 1984 Washington Post article related to drinking and driving rates. A lot has changed in 40 years, including the passage of the Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, which pushed states to raise the legal drinking age to 21.
He conveniently overlooks the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority (VABC) report last year to the General Assembly which found compliance related underage drinking laws for restaurants was similar to that of VABC brick-and-mortar stores.
In fact, the R Street Institute has found that almost every state that permitted delivery and to-go alcohol during COVID-19 witnessed a decrease in underage drinking. Likewise, states that allowed alcohol delivery saw their overall drinking rates rise less than those that prohibited delivery. In terms of drunk driving, states that allowed alcohol delivery experienced lower increases in drunk driving deaths during the pandemic — which intuitively makes sense, given that home-delivery of alcohol allows consumers to avoid driving back from the bar after numerous drinks.
In the future, Mr. Casey may want to use more precise data than a Reagan-era Washington Post article on Maryland when discussing 21st century alcohol laws in Virginia.
Robert Melvin, Richmond

RADIO IQ | By Michael Pope
Published April 1, 2024 at 5:00 AM EDT

Governor Glenn Youngkin is putting his signature on a bill legalizing cocktails to go. 
The idea emerged during the pandemic – customers could help their favorite restaurants stay in business by ordering a margarita or an old fashioned as a takeout item.
Now, the governor is agreeing with lawmakers, allowing the temporary fix to become a permanent solution for restaurants. 
"In Virginia's restaurants, we really have fostered a culture of mixology and experimentation and sort of high-level bartending," says Tommy Herbert at the Virginia Restaurant, Lodging and Travel Association. "And I would recommend for all of the listeners to try something new from one of our great restaurants here in the Commonwealth. You might be very impressed with the mixology skills that you encounter."
The bill, which will become a new law this summer, allows restaurants to sell cocktails to go, although the jury is still out on third-party vendors like DoorDash and Uber Eats. Here's Delegate Holly Seibold, a Democrat from Vienna.
"So, I keep hearing that we’re working to become compliant, but what is the plan? Because I just have a hard time visualizing that we can regulate a delivery service of alcohol," Seibold says.
The new law will allow DoorDash and Uber Eats to deliver cocktails for two years, although lawmakers say if there are problems, they're willing to pull the plug for third-party vendors.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio,

WVEC-13
Author: Kathleen Lundy
Published: 2:32 PM EDT March 22, 2024
Updated: 2:32 PM EDT March 22, 2024

Many states also had similar laws allowing to-go cocktails during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when drinking inside crowded areas was a health risk.

RICHMOND, Va. — A bill permanently legalizing to-go cocktails and mixed wine was passed by the Virginia General Assembly and was approved by Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Wednesday.
Youngkin signed 36 bills into law and offered amendments to two bills. One of the pieces of legislation signed was House Bill 688, which permanently allows businesses to offer cocktails to-go, just in time for National Cocktail Day taking place this Sunday.
Many states also approved similar laws allowing to-go cocktails during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when drinking inside crowded areas like bars was discouraged and sometimes banned.
​

In Virginia, this was due to expire on July 1, 2024, but this bill makes the change a permanent fixture.


Senior Vice President and Head of State Public Policy at the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, Andy Deloney, praised Youngkin's decision on Thursday and explained that "During the pandemic, cocktails to-go were a critical source of revenue for many businesses, and now, the increased convenience and stability they offer is permanent. We applaud the Legislature and Governor Youngkin for supporting Virginia businesses and consumers by making cocktails to-go permanent.”
“Permanence for cocktails-to-go is a great win for Virginia’s ABC-licensed restaurants,” said Eric Terry, president and CEO of Virginia Restaurant, Lodging & Travel Association.

Karri Peifer, author of Axios Richmond

The COVID-19 pandemic wasn't all doom and gloom for restaurants. Through ingenuity, savvy and smart pivots, some managed to find success.

• "The restaurants that embraced [change], especially early on, tended to do better than those that didn't," Hudson Riehle, vice president of research for the National Restaurant Association, tells Axios.

The big picture: Victory in the COVID era hinged on restaurants' willingness to make strategic changes, Riehle says.

• Examples: Adding takeout and delivery, pairing down menus, limiting schedules, finding new revenue streams (like wine and supper clubs) and embracing new laws allowing for cocktails to-go and streetside dining. 

Case study: Before the pandemic, Richmond, Virginia restaurateur Patrick Stamper's two-year-old burger joint, Beauvine Burger Concept, was doing fine, but business wasn't remarkable. 

• That changed in March 2020 when he and business partner Kelsey Aiken set in motion changes that helped them "win COVID," as Stamper tells Axios.
• Immediately pivoting to takeout and delivery has put them in an even stronger business position than ever: Their sales are more than double what they were pre-COVID.

Flashback: In mid-March 2020, Beauvine transitioned from a full-service, dine-in restaurant to a major takeout and delivery operation.

• They added phone lines and turned the dining room into a food packaging assembly line. Servers and bartenders became phone operators and delivery drivers — as did the co-owners.
• They printed up flyers and stuffed them under neighbors' doors.
• They hung a massive "OPEN FOR DELIVERY" banner on the restaurant, posted constantly on social media, and created a guerrilla marketing campaign comparing their cheaper delivery cost to that of third-party platforms like Grubhub.

Beauvine Burger Concept in Richmond found success by leaning into takeout early on. 
The result: The first Friday that dining rooms were shuttered by Virginia mandate, Beauvine set a sales record.

• They broke it the next day, then the Friday after that, and so on for the first few months of the pandemic.

By the numbers: Beauvine and other restaurants that made similar changes are now benefiting from consumer behavior shifts that have stuck around post-pandemic.

• Before COVID, off-premise dining accounted for 61% of all restaurant traffic, per the National Restaurant Association. 
• During the pandemic, it was around 90%, and today it's 74% — good news for takeout-heavy joints.

The bottom line: Stamper credits their success to the skeleton staff that stayed on — and not having any pride about the former business model to hold them back.

• Karri Peifer, author of