Alkoholloven, kontroll og bevillinger

The Alcohol Act requires municipal authorities to monitor the sale and serving of alcoholic beverages, including over-serving and serving of minors. How do these provisions function in a preventative sense in practice? Evaluations of Responsible Management programmes in Trondheim and Bergen revealed that the inspection agency failed to discern or react to what is actually going on in the licensed premises. The annual survey mounted by SIRUS of the municipalities’ enforcement of the Alcohol Act found wide inter-municipal variation. This project seeks to establish how municipalities use powers given them under the Alcohol Act both in respect of monitoring compliance and in issuing penalties for identified instances of non-compliance. It will also look at barriers to and factors enabling collaboration among important actors such as municipal officials, inspectors, police and industry. The project follows in the wake of the Directorate of Health’s programme to strengthen municipal inspection practices. Data are obtained through a) Participant observation, incl. informal interviews, at national meets of the most important municipal actors, this is, politicians, municipal officials and inspectors. b) Participant observation at arenas where actors meet with the intention to strengthen collaboration between themselves. c) Participant observation of compliance inspectors in action to elicit their perspective. d) Document analysis of available records.