N.J. urged to tag beer kegs

TRENTON - Activists hoping to curtail teen drinking are seeking a New Jersey law that would set up a system linking beer kegs to the people who buy them.

The lobbying comes after a New Jersey official's advisory that local efforts to do the same were unenforceable.

Bills being reintroduced in the Legislature would require stores that rent or sell beer kegs to affix the metal cylinders with tags including the purchaser's name and address.

The idea is that if minors are found drinking from a keg, police will know who to charge with providing alcohol to minors.

A dozen states require keg-tagging, according to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

About a dozen New Jersey municipalities also have adopted beer-keg registration ordinances in recent years, according to the state Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control. But efforts to get more towns to adopt them ground to a halt after an October advisory from Jerry Fischer, director of the state Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

Fischer wrote that the ordinances had too many complications - for instance, that a person who legally purchased an untagged keg in one town could be charged for taking the keg into a town requiring tags.

Liquor retailers in towns without the ordinances might still have to follow them, Fischer said.

"The fact remains that it is not the province of one municipal governing body to impose its will and decisions upon another," he wrote.

Freehold Township, Matawan and Red Bank have repealed their tagging ordinances since the advisory. Other towns are considering doing the same.

Even though Fischer's opinion hurt efforts to pass local ordinances, anti-teen-drinking activists are hopeful it might push legislators to pass a statewide law.

"Maybe some good can come out of this decision," Dan Meara, spokesman for the New Jersey chapter of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, told the Asbury Park Press for yesterday's editions.

The New Jersey Liquor Store Alliance argues that keg-tagging would be onerous for customers, and that it would encourage teen drinkers to get legal drinkers to buy them hard liquor instead.